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Barclays is in damage-control mode following a weekend of outages that led the bank to suggest that affected customers may wish to  for help.

In another  from the bank’s official customer service account, Barclays suggested that customers may wish to seek out a food bank if they are unable to pay for groceries.

In another post, a customer was advised to visit the NHS website for mental health advice to cope with the stress of being locked out of their account.

These responses were posted by Barclays customer service representatives after the bank received thousands of complaints due to wide-ranging outages over the weekend.

On Friday (January 31), users of Barclays mobile app, online banking, ATMs, branches, and credit and debit cards began to report service outages and payments glitches.

City and Countrywide, a UK property investment company, was one of the affected customers who  to seek assistance.

“Millions of us are without funds and without any idea of when it will be resolved,” the company said. “Seriously this situation is so bad. As if life in the UK isn't hard enough right now.”

Many customers were unable to make card payments or transfers, including for tax payments, Direct Debits or for sending money between their own accounts.

January 31 was the first payday of the year for many customers, and it was also the deadline for submitting self-assessment tax returns to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

In response, HMRC issued a statement assuring affected customers that they will not be fined if they were unable to pay their tax bill due to the outage.

Other customers reported withdrawing cash from ATMs, or depositing cash at Barclays branches, and seeing no change to their account balance.

“That money better show up in my account at some point,” one poster said on X, describing an experience at a Barclays deposit counter. “I hope I don't end up in a 10-month chase to try and get that money back.”

Customer service channels flooded

Due to the high volume of complaints, Barclays initially told some customers that the bank would be “” over the phone or through its "Message us" service.

These instructions have remained in place until the time of writing (Monday, February 3), even though Barclays announced on Sunday (February 2) that all of its technical issues have been resolved.

“We’re extremely sorry for the issues you’ve faced since Friday when using our services,” it said in a .

“Balances will be updated by the end of today. Everything else is back up and running.

“Our teams will be very busy helping other customers. To save you waiting, please use our app, Online Banking and automated telephone service.”

Lack of leadership highlighted

Many customers and commentators noted that Barclays executives and board members remained silent, despite the extent of the outage and the number of customers affected.

Gary Prince, founder and CEO of payments consultancy Astus Munia Consilium, and a former vice president of mobile banking at Barclays, highlighted the lack of leadership shown by his former company.

“The bank's systems have been down for more than 13 hours so far, and although these posts on X are well-intentioned, suggesting people borrow money from family or friends or visit a foodbank is not what they want to receive,” he said.

“There is some serious explaining to do by Barclays. Where is the bank's leadership? Surely the CEO should be out in front of this and giving an update, apologising to their customers and updating them as to what is going on?”

City and Countrywide made a similar comment on X, asking a customer service representative: “Where is your CEO? Has he nothing to say or has he gone into a hole?”

What caused the outage?

So far, Barclays has given no clear details as to what caused the outage, except for its reference to a “technical issue”.

Speaking to 91����ԭ��, Prince suggested that Barclays and many other similarly sized firms are coming under greater strain due to legacy infrastructure.

“As new services are added, we are seeing the results of a lack of future planning over a period of many years at many of these institutions,” he said.

“They have multiple systems and technology stacks, many using architecture that they would never use now, and without the budgets necessary to build what they require.”

These shortfalls in legacy infrastructure, Prince added, explain why outages at major firms are becoming more frequent, not less.

Potential regulatory impact

The Barclays outage appears to be of a scale that would attract the attention of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA).

If the two regulators opt for enforcement action due to operational resilience failures, the penalties could be significant.

In 2022, TSB Bank was fined £48.5m by the FCA and PRA for operational risk management and governance failures, following several weeks of service disruptions in 2018.

Specifically, the regulators found that TSB had , resulting in a failed systems update that affected all branches and a "significant portion” of the bank’s 5.2m customers.

TSB also paid £32.7m in redress to customers who suffered detriment.

Asked whether larger fines could help to incentivise better risk management, Prince said this could “potentially” be beneficial, but the damage would still be borne mostly by customers and shareholders.

Instead, he suggested that personal accountability at the executive level could offer a greater deterrent.

“Maybe it‘s time to bring in personal accountability and sanctions to an organisation’s leadership team, as many seem to just move on to another position elsewhere.

“Their careers rarely seem to be affected or suffer the consequences.”