The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is investigating a technical glitch that allowed some customers of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland to view other users' transactions when logging into their banking apps. The ICO confirmed it was aware of the incident and would make inquiries.
Worried customers took to social media, reporting that they saw strangers' financial details, including cash withdrawals and benefit payments. Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert, said he received nearly 2,000 comments from concerned users. One customer, Shirley Finlayson, said she saw multiple transactions on the Bank of Scotland app, including names and bank details. Another, Jill Steel, reported seeing the details of 30 people on her Lloyds app, including account numbers and sort codes.
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns the three brands, apologised and said the issue was quickly resolved. A spokesperson stated: 'We're sorry that some customers experienced an issue viewing transactions in the app for a short time this morning. We're looking into what happened.' Organisations have 72 hours to report data breaches to the ICO after an incident.
The glitch follows a series of IT failures affecting UK banks in early 2025, including Lloyds, TSB, Nationwide and First Direct, often on payday. These outages occur as lenders close branches amid a shift to digital banking, with the number of UK bank branches falling from 10,565 in 2014 to 6,870 by 2024.
