Barclays hit by main IT outage on tax deadline day

Barclays financial institution is experiencing severe IT issues that are affecting its app and on-line banking, in addition to funds out and in of accounts.

Clients have informed the NEWSTORN it’s stopping them making important transactions, starting from shopping for child milk to finishing a home transfer.

Barclays says playing cards and money machines can be utilized as regular – although some prospects have mentioned this isn’t the case.

The outage is going on on what’s pay day for many individuals within the UK, and the deadline for self-assessment tax returns.

Barclays has not defined the reason for the IT issues, or how many individuals are affected however has apologised and says it’s “working arduous to repair the difficulty”.

Clients replying to Barclays’ announcement in regards to the outage on social media have reacted with fury whereas reporting a collection of issues it’s inflicting them.

One mentioned their card had been declined regardless of them having funds – one other mentioned that that her January wages “had disappeared”.

A household has informed the NEWSTORN they can not transfer into their new home due to the outage, branding the state of affairs “ridiculous”.

Scott, 27, and his spouse, who’s 4 months pregnant, mentioned that they had offered their home on Friday morning, however the cash for his or her new residence had not gone via but as a result of issues at Barclays.

Scott informed NEWSTORN Information they have been successfully homeless, and had been left ready of their automotive at a service station in Horsham, West Sussex.

“As a result of the system is down, the cash cannot undergo”, he mentioned.

“We simply have to take a seat and wait.”

Ruth, 39, a self-employed cleaner, informed NEWSTORN Information she had been attempting entry cash together with her accomplice from their financial savings account for a number of hours so she might purchase milk for a child and meals for 5 different youngsters she is taking care of at residence.

“We want the cash to do purchasing, our cash is all in financial savings,” she defined.

“I’ve obtained my granddaughter right here who’s 11 months outdated, additionally a one-year-old, two-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old, 15-year-old all at residence.”

She mentioned she had been capable of get some assist from her teenage daughter, however mentioned others may not be so lucky.

“There might be many single mums in the identical state of affairs with no entry to cash,” she informed the NEWSTORN.

Barclays is likely one of the UK’s largest banks, with over 20 million UK retail prospects. It says it processes over 40% of the UK’s credit score and debit card transactions.

Web site downdetector, which screens outages, says hundreds of individuals have flagged issues on the financial institution.

Friday is the deadline for self-assessment tax returns, and a few prospects have mentioned the outage has left them unable to make funds to HMRC.

Earlier, HMRC warned that thousands and thousands of individuals have nonetheless not filed their self-assessment tax returns, and warned of £100 fines for individuals who didn’t meet the deadline.

Nonetheless, in assertion to the NEWSTORN, HMRC mentioned it was “working carefully” with Barclays to minimise any influence on prospects submitting their self-assessments.

A spokesperson added: “Our providers are working as regular, so prospects will be capable to file their returns on time. In the present day’s points is not going to lead to late cost penalties as they do not apply till 1st March.”

In a press release, Barclays mentioned: “We’re in direct contact with HMRC and they’re conscious of the technical points with our system.”

It added: “We are going to make sure that no buyer is neglected of pocket due to delayed funds attributable to this incident.”

It’s not the primary time banking app prospects have been left unable to entry funds or make funds.

PayPal suffered a short however notable outage in November that impacted prospects globally throughout quite a few its merchandise, together with its cryptocurrency providers and standard US peer-to-peer cost app, Venmo.

Hundreds of UK financial institution prospects have been affected by cost issues with a number of the largest lenders in June final 12 months, with banks together with HSBC, Nationwide, Barclays and Virgin Cash all impacted by points with a system that facilitates funds between people and corporations.

Some cash-strapped prospects continued to really feel the consequences of the difficulty for days afterwards.

Throughout final July’s main international IT outage, a number of UK retailers have been unable to take card funds and IT providers have been unable to entry payroll after an misguided replace by antivirus firm CrowdStrike affected programs worldwide.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, mentioned the issues with Barclays confirmed the significance of strong pc programs.

“As soon as once more this goes to indicate how cyber safety and digital resilience is so tightly built-in into our lives,” mentioned Dan Card, BCS’ cyber-security skilled.

Further reporting by Liv McMahon