HSBC, Virgin Money and Nationwide customers suffer online banking outage (updated)

Virgin Money UK

28/06/2024 13:15

(Adds other banks facing outages)
       LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) - Customers of HSBC,
Nationwide and Virgin Money suffered outages to their online
banking services on Friday, in the latest such disruption to
plague an industry which increasingly relies on such digital
access as it closes physical branches.
    Thousands of HSBC  HSBA.L  customers in Britain were unable
to access online banking services on Friday, as the bank
acknowledged an outage affecting some users of its website and
banking app.
    The bank said at 1115 GMT it had restored access to online
and mobile banking, after more than 7,000 customers had
complained of problems, according to website DownDetector which
tracks such outages.
    A spokesperson for the bank said a separate issue was
affecting payments across several banks, causing delays in
transactions between customers as well as failure notifications.
        Virgin Money said some of its customers could not access
online and mobile banking, while Nationwide said some customers'
salary or pension payments were delayed. 
  
    Customers of all three reported being unable to access their
money or pay bills, according to posts on X.  
    Disruption of online banking services has been a persistent
problem for banks in Britain in recent years, and an acute one
because lenders have increasingly encouraged customers to bank
online to help them reduce fixed costs.
    Some 6,000 branches have closed in Britain since 2015,
according to consumer publication Which?. 
    

 (Reporting by Lawrence White; editing by Tomasz Janowski and
Jason Neely)
 ((lawrence.white@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7513 5083; Reuters
Messaging: @ReutersLawrence))