Barclays System Issues-Implications?

[Lex345]

Like lots of people, we were affected by the ongoing Barclays issue, although thankfully we are now able to access our money.

I am curious about what the implications will be for Barclays on a regulatory standpoint-this has affected (just things I have seen)

House completions not going through
People not receiving wages/incoming transfers
People being unable to access funds held at the bank (this was us!)
Balances not updating after debit card payments
Cash withdrawals being allowed against £0 balances
Lots of vulnerable customers unable to buy essentials/pay for care
Direct debits not completing even with funds there

Amongst I imagine hundreds of other knock on effects. Will Barclays be fined? Will the bank be at risk due to this? What on earth could have happened to make this go so wrong?

Also HMRC Self Assessment payment deadline day of 31 January. It’s still having problems 3 days later, it is unacceptable. My son is hoping to exchange contracts on a property any day, he’s with Barclays and going to be stuck if he cannot pay through the app. We are with Barclays and have the app, but I can still log onto Account through the website that seems to be working ok.

We've managed to get the self assessment payment through at last, but I'm hoping there'll be no penalties from it being late.

(The reason we left it until the last minute was that the return had been filed before the December date and we had been hoping it could be taken from a PAYE tax code next year. But having still not had confirmation decided we needed to pay it).

I imagine the implications will depend on what the root cause of the problem has been? I think there'd me more sympathy for a targeted cyber attack than for an untested upgrade (for example).

I'm sure I heard that HMRC will not charge late payment interest on delayed payments due to Barclays issue.

Was it a cyber attack?

I read that it's apparently NOT a cyber attack!

Barclays already have a very poor reputation for customer service, surely now they will see people moving away from them in droves?

Barclays have said that nobody will end up out of pocket, but they can't rewrite history, so there will be loads of needs and opportunities that people had/wanted to benefit from at the time, which will now have been lost regardless.

There was a thread from a MNer who didn't have access to any money to buy food for her kids, so you can hardly just rectify that by leaving them to go hungry for three days but giving them double meals for the next three days.

Even if it was just spotting a one-off bargain luxury that you fancied, if you had the money for it but Barclays denied you access to your own money, that's still completely unacceptable.

Whatever the outcome, this is proof positive that we definitely cannot get rid of cash whilst we have fallible computer systems (i.e. ALL computer systems).

There still seem to be issues this morning. At this point I can only assume a very serious cyber attack. It can’t be something internal to take this long to solve.

I don't think just restoring people to their previous financial positions and covering any late payment fines is anywhere near enough.

There should be hefty compensation paid to everybody whose own money was withheld from them. This is serious.

Why could it not simply be something internal? Retail banking operations are often a complex mess of disturbingly old systems with new services plastered over the top. Money and time for maintenance, tackling the mountain of technical debt, and making sure it's as resilient as possible comes a distant third place behind profit and adding ever more shiny services to the app.

All it would take is critical but overlooked system going down plus the discovery that it wasn't being backed up properly and you've suddenly got a really big problem on your hands. Or an update that was pushed out to your server estate and that caused them to fall off the network after a reboot, such as with CrowdStrike last year.

The communication about what the issue is has been quite poor. I just wondered if Barclays would be hauled over the coals for this-aside from compensating customers, which they surely will have to.

Theyd be insanely foolish to deny it was a cyber attack if they know it is.

I wouldn't be surprised it times out to be some kind of human error doing something with unexpected results

This is quite terrifying and difficult to get to a branch nowadays to try and get the cash out. Apparently on their social media, they recommended people ask friends and family to assist. Disgusting response.

Looks like it should be all back up and running as normal for everyone today.

Barclays and their insurers will be able to compensate for any monetary losses eg charges made by other institutions, who themselves will be able to help by not applying penalties for late payments.

Hopefully any house purchase completions were only delayed and not completely collapsed by this, so again, Barclays should pay for costs such as hotel stays or extra removal costs.

Anyone who's not been able to pay for essentials over the weekend due to not being able to access or receive money will be harder to compensate although it would be nice if Barclays made a token gesture to these people to apologise. Eg give something like £50 to everyone, or on application.

But this incident is a reminder to everyone that these things happen not too infrequently and if at all possible make sure you have more than one account/payment method with completely different banks and preferably one Visa and one Mastercard.

Even if the spare account is an unused credit card or overdraft facility then it will mean you can buy essentials if your main account is compromised for whatever reason.

It is foolish to depend on a single point of failure unless you are unable to avoid this due to limited access to banking facilities or literally needing to budget day to day and wait for money.

Wow, that's the very epitome of chutzpah: "Yes, you've entrusted the looking after of your money to us, but we aren't able to let you have it - so how about you go begging and ask your loved ones if you can borrow money that you already have."

Aside from whether or not they have it to lend to you (hopefully they don't also bank with Barclay's) and are willing, this strongly relies on everybody having a network of well-off, benevolent friends and family.

What if you were escaping an abusive family/relationship and then Barclay's tell you to go back to your abuser and ask them for a big favour?

It can rob you of your dignity being poor and unable to buy the basic essentials; but when you DO have enough money, except it's being kept from you: shocking.

The problem is if a huge cyber attack/DDoS hits multiple banks at the same time or spreads across the wider banking network. So much of it is interconnected nowadays.

Even getting your own cash out could be impossible if their ATM system fails as part of the crash/attack.

Are we really saying that, in 2025, to be sure of being able to access your own money, you need to get large cash supplies out and keep them under your mattress?!

I'm not saying having more than one card will protect against an attack against the entire banking system. But it's likely that it will do so against just about all the outages against one particular bank that's occurred to date.

Sorry, I wasn't getting at you and I do agree.

It just makes you wonder just how far you have to go to avoid being financially vulnerable, should the worst happen.

This happened with the bank I work for several years ago. I won’t say who but in that instance it was a cyber attack and the bank was fined by the regulator.

I was involved with the remediation work and the absolute starting point is putting the customer back in the position they would have been financially, but then distress, inconvenience etc is taken into account when looking at compensation. Customers who are vulnerable are carefully considered. That’s the guidance in place by the FCA so Barclays will no doubt take a similar approach

Haven't RTFT so apologies if this has been discussed already but my concern is for those people with a mortgage who will now have a 'payment default' against their credit rating and in my parents' experience, just one missed payment 12 years prior, was still given as a reason for a loan decline! Even though the mortgage was by that point paid off!!!
That missed payment was to do with a NatWest cyber issue too and my mum worked for NatWest at the time! She tried for years to get that removed from her credit rating but it supposedly couldn't be done as it was to do with a mortgage.

It's just not good enough these days.

Cashless society not looking so rosy now.

Some people have reported issues with the Lloyds Bank payment and transfer system today 🙄 Which bank will it be next ffs?

Well I keep some cash indoors, in my safe. And various cards to pay for stuff if one bank is having problems. All you can do really. 😊