Thousands of UK banking customers were unable to pay credit card bills and access account information yesterday after an IT outage hit US payments company TSYS.

Customers of Royal Bank of Scotland, Tesco and Nationwide Building Society were unable to view credit card information in their mobile apps and digital banking accounts after the glitch with third party provider TSYS, which apologised for the outage in a statement on Tuesday evening, citing a “hardware-related issue”.

This has now been resolved and UK lenders’ service has returned to normal. But the outage, which left some customers unable to pay their credit card bills by a 20 August deadline, highlighted the third party risk attached to outsourcing of elements of banking services.

Customers first started reported problems in accessing their information via mobile apps early on Monday morning, with service outages continuing on Tuesday.

In a statement, RBS explained: "Our third party service provider has advised that this issue, which impacted a number of credit card suppliers, was resolved last night.

“Customer credit card information is now available in our Mobile App and Online Banking. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and we will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result."

A statement posted on Tesco’s social media said: “Our mobile app, online banking and telephony services are now working as normal following the issue which has impacted these services intermittently. We will continue to monitor this and are sorry for any inconvenience.”

A spokesperson for Nationwide said: “Nationwide’s credit cards are managed by a third party.

"For a short period yesterday, an issue at the third-party supplier meant that customers could not access account information. Throughout the period, credit card customers could still use their cards in shops and online. Service was fully restored by late morning yesterday (20 August) at which point customers could service their accounts as normal.”

A spokesperson for TSYS said: "A hardware related issue which impacted the service we provide some of our European clients has been resolved. We are continuing to monitor our systems and are working closely with our clients to ensure everything is functioning properly for their customers. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this service disruption may have caused."

Commenting on the outage, Venkatesh Varadarajan, partner at Infosys Consulting said: "News of yet another IT outage yesterday is just the latest in a long line of crippling IT issues for UK banks in the last year. As we move to a cashless society and a tech-first financial world, banks need to buck their ideas up and improve their technology to support changing consumer behaviour. Those that fail to do so risk losing millions of customers to their competition.

He added: “One of the key causes for the wave of IT system outages is the ageing legacy technology estates that banks run on. Most banks have complex, monolithic systems, so scalability, reliability and quick responsiveness to technology glitches is a major issue for banks and payments companies."

Share Story: