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Several UK banks experienced overlapping service problems on Friday, June 28, 2024. HSBC customers reported difficulty accessing online and mobile banking; some Nationwide customers faced delayed salary and pension payments; and Virgin Money customers experienced intermittent access problems and payment delays. Barclays customers were also affected.
The incident involved two distinct issues: bank-specific login or app failures and a wider third-party payments problem. The available evidence indicates delays and temporary access problems—not permanent loss of customers’ money—and does not identify the incident as a cyberattack.
What happened on June 28, 2024?
The disruption occurred on the final Friday of the month, when many people expected wages, pensions, benefits and scheduled payments to arrive.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute- HSBC: Customers reported problems accessing personal online banking and the mobile app. Some payments appeared delayed or failed, and recent transactions were temporarily difficult to view.
- Nationwide: Some salary and pension payments were delayed, although the overwhelming majority of payments were processed normally.
- Virgin Money: Customers experienced intermittent app and online-banking access problems, alongside a backlog of payments.
- Barclays: The bank was also identified in contemporaneous reporting as affected by the wider payments problem.
These symptoms should not be treated as one identical failure. Being unable to log in does not prove that a payment failed, while a customer may be able to access an account even when an incoming salary or pension payment remains delayed.
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Sky News reported that the Financial Conduct Authority was monitoring the situation and that the Bank of England was engaging with affected banks. That does not, by itself, mean regulators had concluded that a rule breach had occurred or opened formal enforcement proceedings.
When was access restored?
HSBC said its online and mobile-banking access had been restored by 11:15 GMT. A later update at about 2pm said customers could access online and mobile banking, view recent transactions and that the multi-bank payments issue had been resolved.
Restored login access did not necessarily mean every payment had settled immediately. Nationwide said affected salary and pension payments would be processed and paid later that day. Virgin Money said access had returned but that a backlog of payments still needed to be processed.
Sources: Reuters reporting republished by Investing.com and HSBC’s later update reported by Cybernews.
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What caused the disruption?
The banks’ problems overlapped but the available evidence does not establish one confirmed root cause for every institution.
Contemporaneous reporting described a third-party payments issue affecting multiple banks. That helps explain delayed incoming and outgoing payments, including some salary and pension credits. The supplier was not publicly identified in the reporting.
HSBC later provided more specific information in an incident disclosure to Parliament. It attributed its own disruption to a combination of incompatible software versions and a suboptimal server-power setting. The disclosure recorded an incident lasting approximately 2.5 hours and affecting about 330,000 retail customers.
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That HSBC explanation should not be extended to Nationwide or Virgin Money without evidence. It also means the event should not be described as a confirmed cyberattack: the available accounts describe technical and payment-service failures, not malicious intrusion.
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Source: HSBC’s parliamentary incident disclosure.
Were customers’ balances and payments safe?
The reporting supports temporary access problems, delayed processing and misleading or failed-looking payment messages. It does not support saying that customers permanently lost money.
However, a payment that produces an error message may still complete later. Customers were therefore advised not to keep submitting the same payment without first checking what happened. Repeating it could create a duplicate payment if the original instruction eventually goes through.
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How many people were affected?
There is no reliable combined total for all the banks involved. The available figures measure different things:
- More than 7,000 HSBC reports: DownDetector recorded more than 7,000 problem reports at the peak, according to Reuters reporting. This is a user-report indicator, not an official customer-impact count.
- About 330,000 HSBC customers: HSBC’s later disclosure gave this retrospective figure for its own incident. It is not a total for HSBC, Nationwide, Virgin Money and Barclays combined.
Comparing the two numbers directly would be misleading: DownDetector counts submitted reports, while HSBC’s disclosure counts affected retail customers.
Sources: Reuters/Investing.com and the parliamentary disclosure.
What affected customers should have done
- Check official updates. Use the bank’s service-status page and verified social-media accounts rather than relying only on screenshots or posts from other customers.
- Do not immediately resend a failed-looking payment. Check the account, contact the recipient and ask the bank whether the original instruction was received.
- Contact both sides of a delayed incoming payment. If a salary, pension or benefit payment was missing, contact the sending employer or organisation as well as the receiving bank.
- Keep evidence. Save screenshots, error messages, payment times, reference numbers and records of any late-payment charge or other measurable loss.
- Use alternatives carefully. A branch, telephone banking or cash withdrawal may help only if that channel is confirmed operational. Use another payment method only after establishing that the original payment did not complete.
- Ask about losses. If the outage caused a late fee or another direct cost, ask the bank whether it will reimburse the loss. Compensation is not automatically guaranteed.
This was guidance relevant during the June 28, 2024 incident, not a live service-status update for 2026.
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Do not confuse it with the July CHAPS incident
The Bank of England separately reported a CHAPS payment issue on July 18, 2024. That later incident involved high-value and time-sensitive payments, while retail payment systems were reported as unaffected. It was not the cause of the June 28 disruption.
Source: Bank of England.
Why the incident mattered
The disruption showed why “the bank is down” is too broad a description. Digital access, account information and payment processing can fail separately, and restoring an app does not necessarily clear a payment backlog at the same moment.
It also highlighted the operational importance of third-party payment infrastructure. Customers and businesses may depend on several interconnected services even when only one bank’s app appears unavailable. The evidence supports a case for resilient systems and clear customer communication, but it does not show that branch closures caused this incident.
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