Barclays sends six-word message as outage hits third day

Barclays customers have been hit by huge technical problems
-Credit:PA


Barclays has sent a six-word message to customers after technical issues resulted in an outage of banking services. The three-days of disruption have left thousands unable to send or receive cash.

The UK's second-largest bank was first hit with problems on Friday, January 31 and issues continued across its network of more than 20 million customers on Sunday, February 2. However the bank has insisted they were not linked to a cyber attack, the Express reports.

Customers attempting to log on to their mobile banking apps this morning were met with the message: “Thank you for bearing with us.” Barclays said the issue primarily involved people seeing an outdated balance, and no evidence of newly made or received transactions. Barclays said the problem was “taking longer than we’d like to fix”.

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The IT glitch has left civil servant Paola Mereu 'essentially homeless', as she couldn’t complete a payment on a new home on Friday. The 39-year-old, who was not staying at her mother's house with her husband and two young daughters, said: “We sold our house - we had the money from that - but we were unable to complete the other part of the sale so we are essentially homeless."

Technical problems have also impacted card payments and branch and telephone banking, according to the Barclays status check website. As ATM withdrawals reportedly remained unaffected, Barclays urged customers to withdraw cash and continue to use their cards to make payments.

The bank issued a statement on Saturday to say it was “extremely sorry” for the “ongoing technical issues”. It insisted no customers impacted would be “left out of pocket”.