Lloyds Bank and Halifax users unable to use app in latest outage
Lloyds Banking Group has been hit with another app outage that has left thousands of customers unable to use services.
The financial giant – which has Lloyds, Halifax and Scottish Widows under its umbrella – said it was “working to get things back to normal as quickly as we can” as users took to social media with complaints.
The Downdetector, which is used to track banking outages, saw a spike of nearly three thousand complaints during the early Wednesday afternoon.
One customer wrote on social media that it was “becoming too common” for the Lloyds app to go down and was considering switching.
“It’s a joke. Forces me to go from Halifax to Lloyds and is down the moment I try and use it for a payment. Ridiculous,” another wrote, referencing the recent announcement the group was set to scrap the Halifax brand.
It marks the second time in just over a week the Lloyds app has gone down after the bank was hit with an outage earlier this month.
Lloyds suffered a major tech blunder earlier this year, which led to more than 400,000 users being able to access strangers’ transactions.
The group is the biggest UK retail banking unit, serving north of 25m customers.
A Lloyds spokesperson later confirmed the apps were back up and running after the outage.
“We’re aware some customers experienced difficulties accessing them for a short period earlier today, and we worked quickly to restore services. We apologise for any inconvenience,” they added.
Last week UK fintech Monzo initiated a stand-in backup service after an outage left customers unable to use its services.
A Treasury Committee report last March revealed nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies were down for over 803 hours – the equivalent of 33 days – over the last two years.
Barclays topped the list for most outages at 33, but had been able to reduce the length to 93 hours, shorter than some rivals.
HSBC was close behind Barclays with 32 incidents, but nearly double the amount of hours, shooting up to 176.