Thousands of customers at Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have been locked out of their online banking apps following a widespread technical outage on Wednesday.
Customers reported being unable to transfer money, view account statements or pay for goods at supermarkets, cafés and restaurants during the disruption.
All three affected banks operate under Lloyds Banking Group (LON: LLOY), which serves 26 million customers across the United Kingdom.
More than 5,000 customers reported issues with Lloyds and Halifax app and online banking services, according to outage tracker Downdetector.
Users first began reporting problems at around 11:15 on Wednesday morning, according to the same tracker.
Customers attempting to log in were met with a message stating the app was experiencing “a few technical problems,” with an error reading: “Logging in again may fix the issue, but if this doesn’t help, please try again later.”
Lloyds issued an apology on X, writing: “We’re aware some customers are having issues with our app and online banking.”
The bank added: “We’re really sorry about this. We’re working hard to fix it and will let you know as soon as we’re back to normal.”
Halifax initially advised customers to check for pending app updates and to restart their phones before acknowledging the problem on a broader scale.
Some users expressed concern that money transfers initiated during the outage may not have processed correctly, leaving them uncertain about whether payments had gone through.
Customers also complained about lengthy customer service wait times and pointed to a lack of local branches where the issue could be resolved in person.
It remains unclear whether the outage was caused by a hack, data breach, or internal system failure.
Common causes of banking IT failures include problems with third-party suppliers, disruptions from system changes, and internal software malfunctions.
In March, Lloyds was required to pay compensation after a data breach affected half a million customers, during which more than 400,000 users were able to view strangers’ transactions across Halifax, Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland.
Wage payments, HMRC reference numbers, and other personal transaction details were reportedly visible as a result of that earlier error.
That incident led to Lloyds paying nearly £140,000 in compensation to more than 3,600 customers for “distress and inconvenience.”
A Treasury select committee report from March 2025 found that nine of the top banks and building societies in the UK accumulated more than 800 hours of unforeseen tech and systems outages over two years, equivalent to 33 days.
The data showed that at least 158 banking IT failure incidents affected millions of customers’ ability to access services between January 2023 and February 2025.
Consumer group Which? urged the company to compensate any losses suffered and called on affected customers to retain evidence of any impacted payments.
