Banks and building societies should “ensure compensation” is awarded to customers impacted by today’s online and mobile banking outages, according to a leading consumer watchdog.
Which? is urging high street financial institutions to take action after customers of HSBC, Nationwide Building Society and Virgin Money were left unable to “receive pension payments” and wages due to app outages.
Jenny Ross, the editor of Which? Money, outlined the “devastating” consequences these errors could have on customers.
She explained: “The impact of technical faults like these can’t be underestimated, particularly coming so close to the end month when millions of people are waiting to be paid or receive pension payments.
“This could be devastating to people who through no fault of their own could miss important bill payments, find themselves unable to pay for essential services or risk going overdrawn.
“[These] issues which could also come with knock on effects like late payment or overdraft penalties, or even affect your credit score.”
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HSBC is among the banks affected
PA
The money expert broke down the case for compensation in the wake of the technical issues experienced by many Nationwide, HSBC and Virgin Money customers.
Ross added: “Although the problem appears to have been fixed, banks should ensure affected customers are swiftly compensated for any loss resulting from today’s issues.
“Ensure you keep evidence of impacted payments in case you need to make a claim, and in the meantime if you’re likely to miss bill payments, reach out to your mortgage provider or utility provider to let them know you’ve been affected – they should waive any late payment fees.”
Today’s event comes after similar banking app outage issues were reported to have affected Santander customers earlier this year.
Hundreds of customers were locked out of their accounts in April but the situation was swiftly resolved.
Experts are sounding the alarm that this trend of banking app outages may result in hacking theories gaining traction.
Dan Reavill, head of technology for Travers Smith, said: “The fact that multiple banks have been affected will almost certainly lead to speculation that this is part of a co-ordinated and widespread attack.”
In its latest statement, Virgin Money stated: “Update – we’re continuing to work through the backlog of payments, and aim to complete this before the end of Saturday June 29. If we’re unable to process any delayed payments for any reason, we’ll contact you directly. We’re sincerely sorry for the inconvenience caused today.
“If you have tried to send a payment from your Virgin Money account and received an error message, but it has debited your Virgin Money account, please do not try to make the payment again, unless we advise you that the payment cannot be processed.
“If you have tried to send a payment from your Virgin Money account and received an error message but you cannot see the payment reducing the balance in your account, please check with the person you are trying to pay, before requesting the payment again if needed.”
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Bank branch closures are continuing at an ‘alarming rate’, according to Which?GETTY
By 2pm today, HSBC had confirmed on its X account that online and mobile services had returned to normal and customers should be able to access their savings or current accounts.
The bank added: “The payments issue affecting multiple banks is also resolved. We’re really sorry to those impacted and will continue to monitor systems closely.”
A spokeswoman for Nationwide shared that the technical issue had “unfortunately delayed a small number of payments, which we expect will be processed and paid later today”.
However, the building society reiterated that the “overwhelming majority of payments were processed as normal” and that all other customers should be working sufficiently.
