Three of the UK's leading online banks reported outages yesterday, sparking a furious response from users as Britons rushed to buy last minute gifts in the run up to Christmas.
Lloyds Banking apologised to customers after access to the system was blocked at around 9pm for an hour on Thursday evening.
The bank said it was aware people were having problems but the issues had now been resolved.
“We're sorry some of our customers had issues for a short time this evening,” it said.
Customers at Halifax, which is owned by Lloyds, reported an error 503 message appeared when they tried to log on.
“No updates on your website, social media nor phone lines either. I WANT ACCESS TO MY MONEY. IT'S XMAS,” one tweeted.
Digital bank Monzo’s problems started at around 4pm yesterday according to outage monitor group Downdetector, which logged 1,300 complaints after customers were locked out of their accounts.
The challenger bank noted the problem shortly after 4pm, which according to the barrage of tweets affected all parts of the UK. It said later the problem was fixed.
"We're really sorry about the disruption this evening, especially so close to Christmas," it said.
Update: We've now fixed the issues with the Monzo app and payments.
Please re-try any payments that didn't go through.https://t.co/rEOMqFX3Z9
— Monzo Status (@MonzoStatus) December 23, 2021