Hundreds of thousands of HSBC customers across the UK were left without access to their money today after the bank’s online services went down.
Britons took to social media to voice their concerns online as the bank worked for several hours to sort out the problem.
HSBC said the incident, which affected the firm’s website and mobile app, was caused by a technical issue with a scheduled upgrade to the service.
The firm reported that the issue had been resolved at around 9.30am but some customers were still claiming to be experiencing problems 45 minutes later.
Hundreds of thousands of HSBC customers across the UK have been left without access to their money today after the bank’s online services went down
Digital monitoring website Down Detector said it had received hundreds of reports concerning HSBC’s website since the early hours of the morning.
Customers attempting to log in to the website were met with a message that merely stated: ‘We’re sorry that our website is currently unavailable, please try again later.’
The technical issue caused panic for many customers who feared they would not be able to access their finances on what is payday for many Britons.
Many tweeted the bank to voice their frustrations.
One wrote: ‘I need to get on my account, it’s pay day, can you please advise how long these issues are going to be ongoing?’
Another said: ‘Just typical of HSBC to be down on payday.’
Customers have taken to Twitter to voice their frustrations at the technical issue
The problem is currently affecting the firm’s website and mobile app
While one wrote: ‘Any idea when the online banking issues will be fixed? It’s payday.’
Later in the morning HSBC said it had resolved the issue and that its online banking was available again.
But customers were still posting that they could not log in on either their laptops or mobiles.
A spokesperson for HSBC told MailOnline: ‘This morning’s incident was caused by a technical issue with a scheduled upgrade to our personal internet banking service, which did not complete properly.
‘Services were impacted for several hours and customers were directed to our contact centres for urgent banking requirements. The problem was fixed at around 9.30am.’
Last December and January HSBC customers were unable to access online banking services twice in a month in the wake of an apparent cyber attack.
The bank said then it had been the subject of a serious hacking attempt but it had ‘successfully defended against the attack, and customer transactions were unaffected’.
