Major UK Banks Hit by Transfer Delays as Faster Payments System Falters

British banking customers struggled to move money Monday as technical problems struck multiple financial institutions simultaneously. The disruption affected traditional high street banks and digital challengers alike, with users reporting failed transfers and missing payments throughout the day.

The outage impacted Barclays, Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC, Monzo, and Revolut, according to customer reports tracked by outage monitoring service Downdetector. Complaints began surfacing around midday local time and peaked approximately two hours later.

Several banks pointed to the UK's Faster Payments network as the source of the trouble. Lloyds acknowledged the infrastructure issue in responses to affected customers on X, stating it was investigating problems causing transaction delays.

We're investigating an issue affecting Faster Payments, which may cause delays.

A Lloyds spokesperson confirmed to The Sun that the bank was aware some customers were experiencing delays in making faster payments. Despite the acknowledgement on social media, Lloyds' official service status page showed no scheduled maintenance or reported incidents at the time.

The service disruptions manifested differently across institutions. Barclays' status page displayed issues with online banking, specifically affecting customers trying to open savings accounts, ISAs, and bonds through the web interface. The bank noted that its mobile app remained fully operational.

We're sorry if you're having issues opening some savings accounts, including ISAs and Bonds, in Online Banking right now. You can still do this in the app as normal. We're working to fix this — thanks for bearing with us.

Revolut's UK system status page flagged transfers as experiencing problems. The company's support team explained on X that its technical staff was addressing a disruption specifically affecting GBP transfers. Monzo similarly acknowledged temporary issues with transfers, telling customers it was working on a fix.

Downdetector recorded substantial spikes in problem reports across the affected institutions. At the peak of the disruption, the monitoring service showed 348 reports for Barclays, 269 for Lloyds, and 169 for Halifax.

Users complained primarily about three categories of problems: fund transfers failing to complete, mobile banking apps malfunctioning, and online banking portals becoming inaccessible. Some customers reported that money had disappeared from their accounts without reaching the intended recipients.