S Poddar
Barclays customers are still suffering from intermittent payment and transfer errors after a massive IT failure knocked out the High Street bank’s app and online banking services. Problems that started on Friday—the last day before payday for many UK workers as well as the deadline for submitting self-assessment tax returns—have meant customers were unable to carry out vital transactions, from buying baby milk to finalising house moves.
Barclays claims everything was back to normal with its cards and cash machines, but several users said otherwise. The bank has so far refused to give out the reason for the IT trouble or how many customers were affected, although it apologized and said it was doing all it could to clear the matter. Early Saturday morning, Barclays website reported that its app had started working, though payments and transfers were still problematic.
Customers were fanning frustration as power outage led people to express frustrations on social media. One customer said their card was declined despite having enough money in the account, while another claimed that their January wages “disappeared,” although they could be restored. It is causing massive disruption to some customers.
Scott, 27, and his pregnant wife sold their home on Friday morning, but due to the outage of Barclays, he was not able to purchase their new home. He ended up stranded at a service station in Horsham, West Sussex, saying that the situation is “ridiculous”.
“Because the system is down, the money can’t go through,” he said. “We just have to sit and wait.”
For others, the blackout has been an immediate economic burden. For example, 39-year-old self-employed cleaner Ruth was unable to access her savings to buy essentials for her family. She had been trying for hours to withdraw money to purchase milk for her 11-month-old granddaughter and food for five other children in her care.
“We need the money to do shopping; our money is all in savings,” she explained. “There could be many single mums in the same situation with no access to money.”
It’s Barclays, the UK’s biggest bank, catering to over 20 million retail customers, and more than 40% of all credit and debit card transactions go through this bank. A sense of the scale of this outage is coming from Downdetector.com, which monitors service disruptions, reporting that by Saturday morning more than 4,000 problems had been reported with Barclays—the double the count the previous day.
The outage has also caused anxiety for those trying to meet the self-assessment tax return deadline. HMRC warned earlier on Friday that millions had yet to file their returns, with late submissions incurring £100 fines. However, HMRC reassured customers that the Barclays outage would not result in penalties, as late payment fines only apply from March 1.
In a statement, Barclays said it was in direct contact with HMRC and would ensure no customer is left out of pocket due to delayed payments caused by the outage.
This is not the first incident of this nature. Banking apps and payment systems have experienced similar outages in the past. In November, PayPal faced a global outage that affected its cryptocurrency services and Venmo app. Last June, thousands of UK bank customers were affected by payment issues involving major lenders like HSBC, Nationwide, and Virgin Money.
The fragility of tech infrastructure was further highlighted during last July’s global IT outage, which left UK retailers unable to process card payments and disrupted payroll systems. Cyber-security expert Dan Card from BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, made a point on the importance of robust systems.
“Once again, this goes to show how cyber-security and digital resilience are so tightly integrated into our lives,” he said.
For Barclays customers, the outage has been more than an inconvenience—it has disrupted lives. From families unable to move into new homes to parents struggling to buy essentials, the impact has been far-reaching. As the bank works to resolve the issue, many are left hoping for a swift resolution and greater reliability in the future.
The incident serves as a stark reminder of dependency on digital systems and the need for banks to go for resilience and transparency. For now, Barclays customers can do little else but sit and hope their access to funds—and normalcy—will return soon.
