The Co-operative Bank outages: history, compensation and how to check if The Co-operative Bank is down

The longest outage we found was at smile: its app and online banking were unreliable or down from 5 to 11 July 2020, though cards, cash machines, standing orders and direct debits kept working. In June 2024 a fault took duplicate payments from some Co-operative Bank business accounts, pushing some into overdraft.

Is The Co-operative Bank down right now?

This page is a record, not a live monitor, so it cannot tell you whether The Co-operative Bank is working this minute. The Co-operative Bank's own service status page is the place to check. This page also covers smile, the Co-operative Bank's digital brand. One service status page covers Co-operative Bank personal and business banking and smile, which has no status page of its own. The bank is @CooperativeBank on X and smile is @bankwithsmile.

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 The Co-operative Bank outages

11 June 2024: Duplicate business payments

From Tuesday 11 June 2024 duplicate copies of old payments were taken from the accounts of "a small number of SME account holders", pushing some into overdraft. The bank had about 96,000 small business customers. It said it was "in the process of correcting this issue". No cause was given.

5 July 2020: smile app and online banking outage

From 5 July 2020 smile's app and online banking were unreliable and then fully down. Cards, cash machines, standing orders and direct debits kept working, and Co-operative Bank digital services were not affected. On a typical day about 40,000 of smile's 100,000 customers used its app or online banking. smile gave no cause, saying it had "no technical information to share". Access came back "following successful maintenance during the night" of 10 to 11 July. No compensation was announced, and Which? advised customers to complain and claim their losses.

Incidents The Co-operative Bank 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.

Has The Co-operative Bank been fined for IT failures?

We found no FCA or PRA fine against The Co-operative Bank for an IT or operational-resilience failure since 2018.

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 The Co-operative Bank down today?

This page records past outages and cannot show The Co-operative Bank's status this minute. The Co-operative Bank publishes live status at https://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/help-and-support/service-status/. This page also covers smile, the Co-operative Bank's digital brand. One service status page covers Co-operative Bank personal and business banking and smile, which has no status page of its own. The bank is @CooperativeBank on X and smile is @bankwithsmile.

How often does The Co-operative Bank have outages?

The longest outage we found was at smile: its app and online banking were unreliable or down from 5 to 11 July 2020, though cards, cash machines, standing orders and direct debits kept working. In June 2024 a fault took duplicate payments from some Co-operative Bank business accounts, pushing some into overdraft. In its latest published figures The Co-operative Bank reported 5 major operational or security incidents to the FCA in the 12 months to 30 June 2026.

When was the last big The Co-operative Bank outage?

11 June 2024: From Tuesday 11 June 2024 duplicate copies of old payments were taken from the accounts of "a small number of SME account holders", pushing some into overdraft. The bank had about 96,000 small business customers. It said it was "in the process of correcting this issue". No cause was given.

Will The Co-operative Bank compensate me for an outage?

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 The Co-operative Bank 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: The Co-operative Bank's credit rating and safety record, outage figures for every UK bank, and outage histories for Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Chase UK, first direct, Halifax, HSBC UK, Lloyds Bank, Metro Bank.