Bank of Scotland app problems: Is the app down, as TSB, Nationwide, Halifax, Barclays hit by banking issues

Lloyds, Halifax, Nationwide and First Direct have all confirmed issues with their online banking systems.

The technical faults have hit customers of the Bank of Scotland, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group.

The problems have left many customers without access to funds on payday.

So how extensive are the problems and when will they be fixed?

Is the Bank of Scotland app down? What other banking apps are down?

Some customers of Bank of Scotland have reported not being able to access the app on Friday morning. Others have reported receiving a warning about access problems when trying to use the app.

Platform outage monitor Downdetector has received reports of technical issues affecting the Lloyds Bank app rising to more than 4,000 to date on Friday morning.

Nationwide, First Direct, Lloyds and Halifax have all confirmed issues with their online banking systems.

Why are the banking apps down on a Friday?

It is the second month in a row that major banks have been hit by IT issues around payday, with experts saying online banking systems often struggle with the high rate of activity as wages and bills go in and out of accounts at the end of each month.

At the end of last month and in early February, Barclays, Lloyds Bank and Halifax were all hit by service outages, which left customers unable to access funds on or just after payday.

Fintech expert Chris Skinner said in the wake of those outages that banks were finding it “too hard to keep up” with fast-moving technology.

“I think the world is spinning so fast with technology that the challenge we have is no-one’s keeping up, particularly regulators and lawmakers,” he said.

“So the regulators and lawmakers need to have people who do better due diligence. I think there’s an issue here with reliability, service and resilience, and that’s the accountability of the people who are organising the structures, both from within the business, and those who look over the business in terms of the regulators.

“At the moment, I think both are probably finding it too hard to keep up.”

Mr Skinner said the vast array of modern tech systems needed to operate in the banking world today meant firms had “such a smorgasbord of things they have to work with”, the “competence of keeping up with these changes is really challenging every bank”.

Mr Skinner, who also runs industry blog The Finanser, said the flurry of outages on Fridays – and sometimes close to paydays – was likely due to banks planning software updates for weekends as it tends to be a quieter time to carry out such work.

Keith Budden, managing director at business training organisation Ensurety, said: "Another month end, another collapse of the banking system. This is starting to be more than just an annoying niggle, it's now a payments pothole that needs fixing.

“There are two scenarios at work here: either banks need to massively invest in their infrastructure and systems at pace, or there is a band of bad actors - probably state-sponsored - who are getting increasingly effective at their bids to corrupt the banking network.

“If the first is failing to happen, the regulator needs to step in and force the banks to invest. And if it's the second, the government's cyber security resources need to take the lead and get these bad actors locked out.”

When will the banking app problems be fixed?

In messages posted online, the banks said they were working to return their systems to normal. No specific timeframe has been given.

Bank of Scotland has apologised for the fault and said in a direct response to customers: “We know some of our customers are having issues logging on to internet banking & our app. We're sorry for this & working to have everything back to normal.”

Nationwide said in a message on its website “some incoming and outgoing payments are delayed at the moment”, but that “everything else is working normally”.

It said direct debits and standing orders are working as normal, but payments are in a queue and will arrive soon, adding customers do not need to do anything.

Meanwhile, First Direct confirmed on its website that both its mobile and online banking services were “experiencing issues with payments”.

Shortly afterwards, Lloyds and Halifax also confirmed issues with customers being unable to log in to online banking and their respective mobile banking apps.

TSB also confirmed it is having “intermittent” issues with online and mobile banking.