Barclays apologises to customers over issues with payments

Barclays has apologised after customers experienced difficulties with payments into and out of accounts, as well as with its app, telephone and online banking services.

The problems began on Tuesday evening and continued into Wednesday morning before the bank said, just before 6am, everything was working as it should.

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But customers responded to the post on X with complaints of wrong balances and missing transactions.

What happened?

Payments hadn’t gone into one user’s account, they said, while another still couldn’t make payments from a business account at 7.26 on Wednesday morning.

While balances were showing as reduced or increased there was no transaction into or from the account visible for some customers. Recent transactions weren’t showing at all for another X user who posted just before 8am.

Initial problems with the Barclays app and online banking were said to be fixed late on Tuesday evening but issues with payments into and out of accounts and telephone banking were persisting.

Barclays has not said what the cause of the technical difficulty was.

All problems were fixed overnight, the lender said: “We’re sorry for any issues you faced.

“We really appreciate your patience while we got things back up and running.”

There are more than 20 million Barclays customers in the UK and the bank has said it handles more than 50 million payments a month.

A string of March glitches

Barclays is the latest in a string of household names to have experienced technical difficulties in the past month.

Major supermarkets Sainsbury’s and Tesco were unable to fulfil online deliveries due to technical troubles caused by a software update.

Sainsbury’s was unable to take contactless payments in its shops.

Argos, which is owned by Sainsbury’s, was similarly affected as customers experienced issues with ordering new items or collecting orders in-store.

Also in March was the interruption to McDonald’s orders across the world and temporary closure of some branches due to system glitches caused by a third-party provider, the fast food giant said.