Banking app warning as expert details 5 steps to avoid chaos when apps and sites crash

HSBC, Nationwide, Barclays and Virgin Money customers were all blindsided on Friday, June 28, when payment issues interrupted their critical banking operations such as paying bills on the last working day of the month. As a result of the glitch, payments were delayed or unable to be completed leaving some bills unpaid and some salaries unreceived.

Although the issue was speedily fixed by Pay UK, the group overseeing the faulty system, one disgruntled customer on X highlighted the severe impact the short-live issue had: “My bills are bouncing and I can’t pay for a train ticket I need in the next hour.” While many people rely on internet banking, apps and smart wallets for their day-to-day payments, there are some simple steps Brits can enact to help their lives continue as normal the next time their bank may have a technological malfunction.

Andrew Hagger, founder of MoneyComms, noted that sometimes the issue can be isolated to a single app, website or ATM, meaning customers can easily navigate to a different outlet for service. However, he noted a “full-blown outage” takes everything down but are more rare as banks have “IT disaster recovery plans” in place for these situations to minimise the amount of disruption their loyal customers face.

The expert recommended to This Is Money that Brits get a second bank account that has access to online banking, adding that savers don’t need to have a “huge balance” but just enough to make payments timeously. He also highlighted a cash reserve is a simple way of ensuring you won’t be completely stranded if your banking app goes down and while it won’t be able to cover direct debits or likely any major bills, it can still help with smaller purchases like groceries, parking and train tickets.

Keeping a paper trail of your complaints to the bank about the outages is also recommended as detailed receipts will be vital if customers want to take their complaints further to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Similarly, customers might be able to spot trends in the dates, times or lengths of outages as certain times of the month are more prone to issues due to the immense amount of people using the software, such as around pay days.

A tried and tested piece of advice, often hailed by Martin Lewis, is switching current accounts which can see not just cash incentives and benefits flooding your way but if outages are becoming detrimental to your financial situation moving to a bank with less IT issues can be a major help.