Having managed to stem its recent earnings rout, reporting a Q4 rebound in income from continuing operations which rose to £380 million after reporting a loss of £2.24 billion a year ago, UK's Barclays is facing a more traditional problem: on Saturday Barclays customers have reported problems using their cards in shops and withdrawing money from some cash machines according to the BBC.
Barclays customers tweeted about problems using their cards when out shopping or trying to access online banking on Saturday afternoon. "Wondered why my card was declined when paying for lunch. Barclays servers have crashed. Brilliant," said one customer, James. Other echoed his sentiments.
Major problem with Barclays Bank as their server is down effecting all branches nationwide!
— Jason Endress (@JasonEndress) February 25, 2017
Barclays are having a major server issue - all card transactions are being declined and you can't use ATM's either #nightmare
— Tammy Lei (@xtlhx) February 25, 2017
According to the BBC, The bank said it was "working to fix" a problem and advised customers to use other banks' cash machines. It added that telephone banking and in-branch payments were also affected and apologised "for any inconvenience".
We’re still experiencing issues affecting Barclays Debit Card and ATM transactions. Our teams are working to get this restored.
— Barclays UK (@BarclaysUK) February 25, 2017
It is not yet known how many of Barclays' 15 million card customers have been affected by the problems. In a tweet, the bank said: "We're still experiencing issues affecting Barclays Debit Card and ATM transactions. Our teams are working to get this restored." Barclays added: "Technical issues are affecting some digital services. We're investigating this and apologise for any inconvenience."
Technical issues are affecting some digital services. We're investigating this and apologise for any inconvenience.
— Barclays UK (@BarclaysUK) February 25, 2017
This is the latest in a series of technical "glitches" to hit the bank recently. Today's problems come months after thousands of Barclays customers in the north of the UK had payments wrongly taken from their accounts. Last October, Barclays said customers were refunded after they had duplicate debit card payments taken.
An amusing, if accurate comment following the news, highlights just how "safe" one's cash held in the bank is these days:
@zerohedge seems like money these days is backed by the 'full faith and credit' of an institutions IT dept
— StockCats (@StockCats) February 25, 2017