Barclays sorry as payments hit by outage

Barclays has apologised as some customers experience issues with payments into and out of accounts.

The bank says it is "working to fix these problems", which also affect telephone banking.

The problems began on Tuesday evening. Card transactions and ATM withdrawals are unaffected, the bank said.

Issues with the Barclays app and online banking have been resolved, it added in an update on X, formerly Twitter.

Dozens of account holders spoke on social media of problems logging onto the Barclays app as well as the bank's online banking service earlier on Tuesday.

One business customer voiced their concern on social media, saying the issue was "not a joke or glitch; this is people's lives". "We need to make emergency plans if our money is inaccessible or gone," they added.

In messages to customers via its social media page earlier, the bank apologised and said it was aware of issues affecting some users logging into the app and with online banking.

DownDetector, a website which monitors IT issues with companies, noted outages being reported with the bank from about 21:15 GMT on Tuesday.

Barclays is the latest company to be affected by technical issues in recent days.

Last weekend, supermarket Sainsbury's was forced to cancel deliveries to customers after an IT problem and could only take cash in its supermarkets. Tesco was also affected by similar technical issues.

Earlier in the month fast food chain McDonald's had to close many of its restaurants after it suffered IT outages in stores around the world, it blamed the problems on a third-party provider.