Millions of users of on-line banking services have been hit this week by disruptions at three different banks. Cashplus was the first bank to experience difficulties, the impact on customers was particularly severe as it is an on-line bank so people were unable to access their accounts, make cash withdrawals, or make or receive payments. Then, over the last two days there have been disruptions to on-line banking at two traditional banks, Barclays and RBS.
All the problems appear to have been resolved now but clearly this is a growing problem as more and more people rely on on-line banking. Moreover, it seems to be only part of a wider issue with IT resilience in the financial services sector. Already this year we have seen two separate disruptions to HSBC on-line banking in January; massive IT problems at TSB from April onwards; disruption to the Lloyds Bank website in May and disruption to the UK Faster Payments System in July.