Barclays outages: history, compensation and how to check if Barclays is down

Barclays told the Treasury Committee of 15 incidents that hit customers' app, online or telephone banking between January 2023 and January 2025, 93 hours in all. Its worst recent outage was a mainframe fault from 31 January to 2 February 2025, when 56% of attempted payments by logged-in customers failed. In September 2018 software changes took online and telephone banking down for several hours.

Is Barclays down right now?

This page is a record, not a live monitor, so it cannot tell you whether Barclays is working this minute. Barclays' own service status page is the place to check. Barclays posts known problems on its service status page, which covers the app, Online Banking, Telephone Banking, cards, cash withdrawals and payments, and on X as @BarclaysUKHelp.

During an outage your money stays in your account: outages stop you reaching it or paying with it, they do not remove it. The Financial Ombudsman Service lists scams that exploit outages among the complaints it sees, so be wary of calls or messages offering help during one.

Major Barclays outages

8 March 2025: App payments outage

Barclays' own records, quoted in a Financial Ombudsman Service decision, show that customers could not make payments in the app between 7:35am and 11:54am on Saturday 8 March 2025. The Ombudsman upheld that customer's complaint.

31 January 2025: Mainframe failure

From about 9:48am on Friday 31 January 2025 a software problem in a critical module of Barclays' UK mainframe operating system stopped many payments: 56% of attempted payments by logged-in customers failed. The app and online banking were back by 1:30am on 1 February, with further login and payment errors from 8am to about midday. Phone lines had long waits. Debit cards and cash machines mostly worked and branches stayed open. Barclays said it was not a cyber-attack and estimated compensation for inconvenience or distress at £5 million to £7.5 million.

26 March 2024: Payments and app outage

From late on 26 March 2024 into the early hours of 27 March, some Barclays customers had problems with payments in and out of their accounts and with the app. Barclays apologised.

17 October 2023: App and online banking outage

From the morning of 17 October 2023 the Barclays app and online banking were unavailable, and they were still down at lunchtime. Barclays' status page read "The service is unavailable." Barclays said on X that it had "widespread issues with our app and online banking" and that it had not been hacked.

20 September 2018: Software change failure

On 20 September 2018 Barclays online banking, telephone banking and some branch-based services were disrupted for several hours, and were fully restored by late afternoon. Cash machines, core mobile banking features and card services stayed available. About 1.3% of customers' digital traffic was disrupted. Barclays said software changes "interacted in a rare and unexpected manner that did not present in extensive pre-testing".

Incidents Barclays reported to the FCA

Since August 2018 every bank or brand with at least 70,000 personal current accounts, or 15,000 business current accounts, must publish each quarter how many major operational or security incidents it reported to the FCA: the total, and how many hit telephone, mobile and internet banking, for the latest quarter and the latest 12 months.

What Barclays told Parliament

On 10 February 2025 the Treasury Committee Chair, Dame Meg Hillier MP, wrote to Barclays UK and eight other banks and building societies. She asked how often IT failures had stopped their services over the last two years, how many customers were affected, how much compensation they had paid and what caused the failures. Barclays was also asked about its 31 January to 2 February 2025 outage.

Barclays UK reported 33 service-disruption incidents to the FCA between January 2023 and January 2025, not counting 31 January 2025. 15 of them hit customer channels, for 93 hours in all and about 3.3 million customer impacts. The other 18 affected payment processing only. Barclays gave the causes as technology change in 12 cases, operational error in 10 and third-party technology or service failure in 7.

Barclays' annex listed each incident. They included 19 hours in August 2023, when a corrupt message delayed incoming Faster Payments and some customers got money the next day; 16 hours of telephony and chat problems in February 2023; 13 hours of CHAPS and online banking payment delays in August 2024, caused by a slow third-party system; two database software faults in March 2024, of 6 and 5 hours, that hit Faster Payments, debit cards, cash machines, the app and online banking; and 4 hours of app and online banking errors in October 2023 after a database change.

In a follow-up letter Barclays said 9 of the 15 incidents that hit customer channels, 59 hours in all, were of Major severity. It said the 31 January 2025 outage affected 12% of its Retail and Business customers, 0.5% of UK Private Banking and Wealth clients and 45% of UK & International Corporate clients.

The Committee said nine of the top banks and building societies had at least 803 hours of unplanned outages, more than 33 days, from at least 158 IT failure incidents between January 2023 and February 2025. It said Barclays "could pay out up to £12.5 million in compensation due to outages".

Has Barclays paid compensation for outages?

For the 31 January to 2 February 2025 outage Barclays first estimated compensation of £5 million to £7.5 million for inconvenience or distress, and said no customer would be out of pocket. It used its own data to find errors and make automated refunds, so customers did not always have to complain.

Barclays first estimated compensation for its other IT incidents between January 2023 and January 2025 at less than £5 million. On 9 April 2025 it revised this to about £102,000 directly attributable to a technology incident. The Treasury Committee's figure of up to £12.5 million for Barclays, published on 6 March 2025, came before this revision.

In one Ombudsman case about the 8 March 2025 app outage, Barclays said the outage was over by 12:31pm and paid the customer £50.

After the 20 September 2018 disruption Barclays said it was "supporting and, if appropriate, compensating any customers who were impacted". It gave no amount.

Has Barclays been fined for IT failures?

We found no FCA or PRA fine against Barclays Bank UK PLC for an IT or operational-resilience failure.

Your rights if an outage costs you money

No law sets a fixed amount of compensation for a bank outage. What you are owed depends on what it cost you, and banks decide most cases themselves.

If a payment you made fails or goes wrong, your bank must refund it without undue delay and put your account back as it would have been, and it is liable for any charges and interest you have to pay as a result. It is not liable if the failure was caused by abnormal and unforeseeable circumstances beyond its control that could not have been avoided.

The Financial Ombudsman Service says that when it upholds an outage complaint it can tell the bank to refund extra costs caused by the outage, such as overdraft or late-payment charges, and to pay for distress and inconvenience. In one case it published, a bank offered £25 after a multi-day outage and the Ombudsman told it to pay a further £75.

Complain to the bank first. For a complaint about a payment it must reply in full within 15 business days, or 35 in exceptional cases; for other complaints within eight weeks. You then have six months from its final response to take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge.

Frequently asked questions

Is Barclays down today?

This page records past outages and cannot show Barclays' status this minute. Barclays publishes live status at https://status.uk.barclays/. Barclays posts known problems on its service status page, which covers the app, Online Banking, Telephone Banking, cards, cash withdrawals and payments, and on X as @BarclaysUKHelp.

How often does Barclays have outages?

Barclays told the Treasury Committee of 15 incidents that hit customers' app, online or telephone banking between January 2023 and January 2025, 93 hours in all. Its worst recent outage was a mainframe fault from 31 January to 2 February 2025, when 56% of attempted payments by logged-in customers failed. In September 2018 software changes took online and telephone banking down for several hours. In its latest published figures Barclays reported 15 major operational or security incidents to the FCA in the 12 months to 30 June 2026.

When was the last big Barclays outage?

8 March 2025: Barclays' own records, quoted in a Financial Ombudsman Service decision, show that customers could not make payments in the app between 7:35am and 11:54am on Saturday 8 March 2025. The Ombudsman upheld that customer's complaint.

Will Barclays compensate me for an outage?

For the 31 January to 2 February 2025 outage Barclays first estimated compensation of £5 million to £7.5 million for inconvenience or distress, and said no customer would be out of pocket. It used its own data to find errors and make automated refunds, so customers did not always have to complain. If a payment failed or went wrong, your bank must refund it and is liable for the charges and interest that result. Beyond that there is no fixed amount: complain to the bank, and if you are unhappy with its answer the Financial Ombudsman Service can order it to refund costs and pay for distress and inconvenience.

How do I complain about a Barclays outage?

Complain to the bank first and keep evidence of any costs, such as late-payment or overdraft charges. It has 15 business days to answer a complaint about a payment and eight weeks for others. You then have six months to take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free.

More: Barclays' credit rating and safety record, outage figures for every UK bank, and outage histories for Bank of Scotland, Chase UK, first direct, Halifax, HSBC UK, Lloyds Bank, Metro Bank, Monzo.