MAJOR banks, including Lloyds and Halifax, are down this morning after a global IT outage hit dozens of websites.
Dozens of online services, games and apps – including the HMRC website and several banks – are offline due to a crash at hosting company Amazon Web Services.
Tens of thousands of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax customers are unable to log in to online banking or mobile apps due to the outage.
One customers said on X: “Lloyds bank down. App not working. I’ve tried Halifax app and the same issue.”
Another said: “Lloyds bank down app and card declined…”
A third added: “App is down, online is down….
“Please acknowledge and fix it. This has nothing to do with cache or internet access.”
A Lloyds Bank spokesperson said: “Issues with Amazon Web Services are affecting some of our services right now.
“We’re sorry about this and ask customers to bear with us while we work to bring all our services back online as soon as possible.”
The problem is believed to be caused by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which powers thousands of websites.
AWS went down earlier today, causing issues for many major online services around the world.
Amazon Web Services says its engineers started working on the problem as soon as it was found and are now fixing it and looking for the cause.
Downdetector, a website which tracks complaints about online services, showed a spike in reports on Monday morning, including more than 2,681 at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and 500 reports of issues for the HMRC website by 9am.
Other services showing a spike in reported outages included Slack, Ring, Vodafone, Signal, Halifax, BT, EE and Sky.
AWS is the world’s largest cloud computing provider and offers a wide variety of services, including storage, databases, machine learning, and security tools.
Last year, the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike accidentally caused worldwide problems by updating its software with a bug.
Which services have been knocked out?
- Amazon
- Amazon Alexa
- Amazon Music
- Amazon Prime
- Ancestry
- Asana
- Atlassian
- Bank of Scotland
- Blink Security
- Brawl Stars
- BT
- Clash Royale
- Coinbase
- Dread by Daylight
- Duolingo
- EA
- EE
- Epic Games Store
- Eventbrite
- Flickr
- GOV.UK
- Halifax
- Hay Day
- Hinge
- HMRC
- HMRC
- IMDb
- Jira Software
- Life360
- Lloyds Bank
- My Fitness Pal
- Peloton
- Perplexity
- PlayStation Network
- Pokémon GO
- Ring
- Robblox
- Rocket League
- Signal
- Slack
- Smartsheet
- Snapchat
- Square
- Tidal
- Trello
- Ubisoft Connect
- Vodafone
- Vodafone
- Wordle
- Xbox Network
- Xero
- Zoom
Can I claim compensation for bank outages?
Banks don’t have to pay out compensation to customers if there’s been an outage or if they’ve experienced technical issues.
But you might be entitled to some money back depending on how much the disruption affected you as a consumer.
To make a claim, you have to present evidence of how the outage negatively affected you, including any extra costs incurred.
For example, this could be if you were charged for making a late payment.
You should make a note of when you were unable to access the services and also the names of the people you spoke to at the company who suffered the outage.
You can usually find out more details about how to complain to your bank on its website.
If your bank doesn’t resolve your complaint, you can take your case up with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
It is an independent body which will resolve any issues based on what it thinks is “fair and reasonable” depending on the circumstances of the case.
The service can resolve your issue over the phone, by email or post depending on what best suits you.
What to do if you can’t access your money
IF you can’t access your money and you need to urgently, here’s what to do:
- Visit your local branch as soon as you can.
- If you can’t get there, or it is closed, call your bank and ask for its guidance on what to do.
- If the bank’s phone services are also down or busy, try contacting your bank on social media to ask what to do. But remember: don’t ever share your account details over social media.
- Try to do this on the day the problem arises so you can show you made every attempt to solve the issue.
- If you still can’t access your money, begin gathering evidence for a complaint.
