Lloyds Banking Group issued an apology Wednesday after an IT glitch left thousands of customers across its brands unable to make payments, send money or access their mobile banking apps and websites for more than three hours.
According to Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time service outages by aggregating user reports, customers began reporting problems shortly after 11 a.m. BST on Wednesday. The failures affected the group’s major retail brands: Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows and MBNA.
More than three hours after the problems started, some customers said they were still unable to use the group’s mobile apps and websites. Several said they needed to send money or had been unable to pay for lunch or groceries, according to posts on the social platform X. Some argued they should be compensated for the inconvenience.
Lloyds and Halifax customer-service accounts on X acknowledged the disruption in replies, stating: “We’re really sorry about this. We’re working hard to fix it.” Shortly before 3 p.m. BST, the group released a broader statement: “All our services are back up and running. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused, and if customers are still experiencing any issues, please leave it a few minutes and try again.”
The outage is the second major IT failure for Lloyds in three months. In March, the bank reported that a software defect introduced during an overnight update to its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland mobile banking apps had exposed the personal data of nearly 500,000 customers, leaving people’s payments, account details and national insurance numbers visible to other users.
The latest incident comes as British banks continue to close physical branches and push more customers toward digital-only banking, a trend that has prompted questions from lawmakers and consumer advocates about the reliability and security of digital services.