Barclays mobile and online banking crashed on Tuesday

Barclays’ mobile and online banking services became unexpectedly unavailable for around two hours before the bank managed to bring them back up.

The UK banking giant reached out to customers using social media, confirming that the service is indeed down. It also informed millions of consumers that the cards and ATMs should still work as normal for those who need to make payments while mobile and online payment services are unavailable.

We’re sorry about our ongoing issues with our app and Online Banking pic.twitter.com/RkqeVeV0Qb

— Barclays UK Help (@BarclaysUKHelp) October 17, 2023

A mix of positive and negative reactions

After the service broke down, the down detector website recorded thousands of complaints during yesterday morning alone. The majority of them — around two-thirds — complained about the mobile banking app being inaccessible, suggesting that this is the method that most users prefer.

As mentioned, Barclays addressed the matter in a tweet, apologizing for the issue, only to publish another statement several hours later. This announcement said that the bank had fixed some technical issues, apologizing that it took so long to do it.

You're welcome Patricia😊 Thank you for bearing with us – We’re so sorry it took us so long to get things back up and running.

– Yasmine

— Barclays UK Help (@BarclaysUKHelp) October 17, 2023

Despite a wave of complaints, the bank also received multiple messages of understanding and encouragement, thanking its customers for the positive tweets along the way. One of them, @rsrob1990, wrote that he knows that a lot of people will be angry about the outage but noted that he understands that the bank is doing its best to resolve it.

thanks i know a lot of people will be angry over the outage, but i know you guys were doing your best to resolve it.

— Robby (@rsrob1990) October 17, 2023

Barclays responded to most such messages, thanking the community for understanding and offering help for anyone who might still be experiencing issues in regards to the matter.

Still no word on what went wrong

So far, Barclays has not posted any new updates regarding what exactly happened. According to some users’ frustrated messages, not everyone seemingly got access to its services at the same time. While it has officially been two hours between the moment when the problems started and the moment the bank said the issues were resolved, some have complained that it has been over four hours since they lost access to its services.

The bank’s support team offered advice for users to clear the cache and cookies, try out different browsers, and alike. However, the service seemingly did not return back to normal right away, as it was expected.

The bank also did not respond to requests for comments on what happened. The company did announce earlier that it is planning to do some work on its systems, but this was not supposed to happen until October 22. But, given the fact that banks across the UK — Barclays included — have been shutting down dozens of branches and offices because customers seem to favor digital banking more, issues like these are not something that they can afford.