Thousands of customers at Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have been locked out of their banking apps on what is payday for many across the UK. Users took to social media from early morning to report that the apps crash repeatedly before they can log in, preventing them from checking balances or paying bills.
One Halifax customer said the app “opens for a few seconds then disappears”, while a Lloyds user reported that after the introductory screen, the app closes itself and returns to the home screen. Concerns have been raised that some people may not be able to make urgent payments or verify whether their salary has been deposited.
Financial technology specialist Chris Skinner attributed the outages to the difficulty banks face in keeping up with rapidly advancing technology. He noted that system updates are often scheduled for Friday evenings, the quietest period for transactions, but can cause problems if they go wrong. He also warned that paydays present an attractive target for cybercriminals, though he said there is no evidence that this incident involves criminal activity.
According to Downdetector, the peak of the disruption was around 8am, with 762 reports for Lloyds, 452 for Halifax and 87 for Bank of Scotland. Eight hours later, hundreds of issues were still being logged, with Lloyds the worst affected. The banks have not yet issued a statement on the cause of the outage or when services will be fully restored.
This is the latest in a series of online banking outages in recent months. In February, a glitch affected Barclays, Lloyds and Halifax, preventing customers from receiving payments. Industry experts have called for better due diligence and resilience from both banks and regulators to prevent future disruptions.
