The 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 be making inquiries.
Customers took to social media to report seeing strangers' financial details, including cash withdrawals and benefit payments. Consumer champion Martin Lewis highlighted the issue on Facebook, prompting nearly 2,000 comments from concerned users. One Bank of Scotland customer said she saw transactions dating back to 2024, complete with recipient names and account details. Another Lloyds user reported being able to access the financial information of 30 people, including names, account numbers, sort codes and National Insurance numbers.
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns the three banks, 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 decide whether to report a data breach to the ICO.
The incident follows a series of IT failures affecting UK bank customers in early 2025, including Lloyds, TSB, Nationwide and First Direct, many on payday. These outages come as traditional lenders face competition from digital-only banks and continue to close branches, with UK branch numbers falling from 10,565 in 2014 to 6,870 by 2024.
