Major UK bank ordered to pay £12,500,000 to customers after outages

The outages occurred on payday for millions of people.

The outages occurred at the end of January and February, causing days of payment disruption on payday for millions of people.

Barclays are estimated to pay £5m to £7.5m in compensation to customers for "inconvenience or distress" caused by the outages.

Additionally, they will pay £5m for other outages from January 2023 to February 2025.

The sum will be the second highest paid out by a firm in the last two years, behind Bank of Ireland.

January's outage was caused by a "severe degradation" in the mainframe computer, which is used to bulk data processing.

As a result of this, 56% of the bank's online payments failed.

It wasn't just Barclays that were affected, the top 9 banks and building societies suffered 158 individual IT failures, resulting in outages of 803 hours in total.

Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Dame Meg Hillier MP, said: "For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying experience.

"The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely valid.

"The reality is that this data shows even the most successful banks and building societies hit technical glitches.

"What’s critical is they react swiftly and ensure customers are kept informed throughout."