HSBC apologizes for online banking outage, says customers will not ‘lose out’

HSBC has said “more and more customers” are managing to log into their internet banking accounts following two days of IT faults.

Millions of the bank’s personal and business customers first found themselves locked out of their online accounts on Monday.

In a message on Twitter, HSBC said: “Good morning, unfortunately we are experiencing further service issues with personal online banking, however our Mobile App is available”. In a statement, the bank says: “We will ensure customers do not lose out as a result of this issue”.

They’re probably switching the Commodore 64 on and off, which runs the whole IT infrastructure at the bank. One of the customers stated that the daily overdraft fee was charged from him, but was unable to transfer money into his account.

The news service cited unnamed sources close to the regulator, who said that a major tax investigation was a matter for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs rather than the FCA.

HSBC has yet to offer an explanation for the online issues, though it has denied the problems have been caused by cyber criminals in a so-called DDOS attack.

Thousands customers went to social media to vent their frustration, with one angry Twitter user describing the issue as “shocking disgraceful customer service”.

Its last significant outage in June a year ago led to delays in the processing of around 600,000 payments across its RBS, NatWest, Ulster Bank and Coutts businesses.

He added: “Barely six months after the last glitch in their under-performing IT systems, HSBC is apologising again to its customers”.

The bank said personal customers are experiencing problems logging in online, while business banking customers are having problems online and with the bank’s mobile app.

Its rapid take-up hasn’t been welcomed across the board though, and concerns remain as to what extent banks have compromised security in order to roll out quicker payment services for expectant customers.

HSBC has previously suffered IT problems.