Written by Lawrence White
LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Thousands of HSBC customers in the United Kingdom reported on Friday that they were unable to access some mobile and online banking services, the latest in a long line of such problems facing… British banks.
Downdetector, which tracks outages, reported that complaints began shortly after 0700 GMT and peaked at more than 4,000 at 0900 GMT, with hundreds of customers complaining of problems at 1600 GMT.
HSBC acknowledged these problems.
A spokesperson for the bank said: “We are working hard to restore HSBC UK’s online and mobile banking service, including allowing online purchases through the app.”
“We understand that this is really frustrating for some of our customers, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience,” he added. These failures were the result of “an internal problem in the system,” according to the spokesman.
Consumer advocates said the problems faced by Britain’s largest bank were particularly serious given that it was one of the country’s busiest shopping days.
“This disruption by HSBC will cause a real headache for many of its customers. In the worst case, it could prevent people from making basic payments like rent and bills, but it also falls on Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days. “This year,” said Sam Richardson, deputy editor of consumer advocacy magazine Which?
In recent years, regulators and politicians have repeatedly called on banks to avoid such problems, at a time when lenders are reducing their physical presence and encouraging customers to rely on digital services.
(Edited in Spanish by Carlos Serrano)
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