You are here: silicon.com > Financial Services > News

HSBC crash leaves customers cash-strapped

Thousands hit by UK outage...

Tags: hsbc

By Andy McCue

Published: 16 October 2006 11:45 BST

An HSBC network crash left thousands of customers without cash and unable to use their debit and credit cards at the weekend.

The outage meant HSBC and First Direct customers were faced with service messages when trying to take out cash at ATMs or they had their cards declined when trying to pay in shops or restaurants.

The system went down between 12:00(BST) and 15:00(BST) on Sunday afternoon and affected thousands of customers, mainly in the South of England, although other parts of the country, including Yorkshire, were also affected.

silicon.com Financial Services

Get the latest financial services news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the FS newsletter today!

A spokesman for HSBC apologised to customers for the outage and said the problem has now been fixed.

He said: "We had some issues which meant the card reader in the ATM or in the device in the shop were unable to communicate with our system and approve transactions. It was our fault."

The spokesman said the bank is currently investigating the cause of the glitch and why it only affected certain areas of the country.

  1. Zones
  2. Management
  3. Networks
  4. Software
  5. IT Services
  6. Hardware
  1. Verticals
  2. Public Sector
  3. Financial Services
  4. Retail & Leisure

silicon.com Financial Services
Get the latest financial services news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the FS newsletter today!


  • Jobs
Excellent Opportunity! 2nd Line Support Engineer-Hertfordshire- 25k

Linux Operating systems - Comms experience ISDN, X25, Router/TA configuration Sarian, Cisco - MySQL database - Programming one of C, C++ - Software ...

Support Manager - Financial Software - London - 50/55k

My client specialises in providing payment solutions to large blue chip clients, most notably in the banking sector, they specialise in credit ...

Senior implementation consultant -Etrading - MM - FX - Implementation

They financial strength has been built up by wise investments, careful management of the business, recruitment of the best staff, fair pricing to ...

Steve Boyle
Woolly risk analysis is hastening a housing crash
Comment: Lenders need a sane approach to avert a crisis

Carol Wheatcroft
Will consumers always want free banking?
Targeted, bundled services will be the way to profit...

Steve Boyle
Are rogue traders an inevitable evil?
Opinion: Managers must increase diligence to beat fraud

Julian Goldsmith
Profile: Nottingham Building Society head of IT Jack Cutts
'On the wide accountancy'...

Steve Boyle
Why you should be outsourcing your data centres
Concentrate on the core business...

Bob McDowall
Fixed-income electronic trading faces bleak 2008
Trading platforms likely to draw in their horns for downturn

CIO50 2008
The silicon.com CIO50 2008 profiles the most influential and innovative tech chiefs in the UK across all industries and organisation size, from the biggest FTSE100 companies to high growth dot-com start ups and the public sector. The list was voted on by the UK CIO community and a panel of experts. Find out more in our latest special report.




Quick Sitemap Links: