Miles Brignall 

Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks hit by IT failure

Bank group vows to investigate after latest glitch stops wages and payments to customer accounts
  
  

The Clydesdale Bank in Glasgow.
The Clydesdale Bank in Glasgow. Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters

Customers of Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks have become the latest customers to fall victim to an IT failure after wages and other payments failed to arrive in their accounts on Friday.

The group, which now includes Virgin Money, said it was conducting a “full investigation” after customers took to social media to complain their much-needed January wages had not arrived in their current accounts as expected.

Hundreds of customers may have been affected by the problem, which the Guardian understands was down to an incorrect processing date on a Bacs file.

One customer asked: “How long will this be likely to take I have two children and no wages in the bank?” Another added: “Wages not in and I’m not the only one.”

Yorkshire Bank Group (CYBG), which bought Virgin Money in 2018, has apologised to the “small number” of affected customers.

“We are working hard to put this right and anticipate that everyone who should have received a payment today will have their money in the early hours of this morning. Anyone who has been financially disadvantaged by this will be compensated,” he said.

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It has not been a good start to 2020 for financial firms. Millions of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers were unable to gain access to their accounts through the banks’ websites and mobile apps for almost nine hours on New Years Day because of an IT failure.

Travelex was forced to to take its websites offline on Thursday following a cyber-attack. The problems persisted all day on Friday and the site was still not up and running by Friday evening.

Jenny Ross, the Which? Money Editor, said: “Our research has found banks are being hit by almost daily IT failures, which can leave customers without wages and struggling to make essential payments like rent or bills. With banks increasingly moving customers online, more needs to be done to ensure that their systems are robust enough to prevent hugely disruptive outages.”

 

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