Lloyds, Halifax, NatWest suffer outages ahead of bank holiday weekend

Lloyds Bank, Halifax and NatWest are suffering from a technical meltdown that has left many customers with problems accessing their accounts and caused some payments to disappear ahead of the bank holiday weekend.

Customers have taken to social media to complain about money transfers disappearing or being delayed, while others have struggled to access their account through the mobile app and online.

The technical issues, which arose on Friday morning, come on payday for many customers and ahead of the bank holiday.

Technology experts points out that banks’ archaic technology platforms often come under pressure at the end of the month on paydays or ahead of bank holidays due to the large volume of payment transactions.

Banks have suffered from a series of high-profile technology glitches over the past couple of years that have delayed payments or hindered account access.

A NatWest spokesperson said:

We are aware that some customers are currently experiencing issues with our mobile app and online banking running slowly. Some customers are also seeing issues completing transfers on accounts.

We are working hard to resolve this and apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Although NatWest’s app and online banking are operating, some customers are experiencing delays. The issues come in the same week as RBS and Lloyds report their first quarter earnings.

Lloyds reported a doubling of profits year-on-year in the first quarter to £1.3bn. RBS posted its first quarterly net profit since October 2015, reporting £259m.

Lloyds Banking Group said:

We are aware that some of our customers are experiencing issues logging on to internet banking across all Lloyds Banking Group brands. We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience caused.