Black horse down: Lloyds online banking services go dark

Updated UK banking giant Lloyds is struggling to account for malfunctioning online services today as customers report being unable to view transactions through the app or website.

In a statement to The Register, a spokesperson for Lloyds Banking Group said: "We know some of our customers are having issues viewing their recent transactions and our app may be running slower than usual. We're sorry about this and we're working to have everything back to normal soon."

Problems started earlier this morning, according to outage monitoring service Downdetector, with reports rolling in shortly after 0700 UTC. At the time of writing, those glitches are ongoing for many customers trying to access the bank's online services. Transactions are not showing up either in the app or via the website.

Customers can see a balance, but little else. On the plus side, payments and standing orders appear to be working normally.

Some customers blamed the outage on the arrival of the company's new banking app. However, issues with the website indicated that problems lie elsewhere. Lloyds' social media team appears as clueless as customers regarding the problem, initially suggesting that clearing cookies or trying a different browser might resolve things. It did not.

On its latest update to X, Lloyds wrote at 1016 UTC: "We are aware there is an issue and our IT team are currently working to fix this as soon as possible. If you can use the 'September' tab, you should be able to see all transactions."

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Like many companies, large swathes of Lloyds' IT is outsourced nowadays. In 2020, it inked a contract with Microsoft to manage its mobile and desktop services. In 2017, it signed an outsourcing agreement with IBM. It has also had its fair share of outages, enduring a nightmare start to 2020 as its online services experienced significant downtime.

Today's unplanned downtime is more about viewing transactions. And as if to rub salt into customers' wounds, the outage has come as Lloyds Banking Group announced another round of branch closures.

Group retail director Vin Maru told Sky News: "Our branch network is an important way for us to support our customers, but we need to adapt to the significant growth in customers choosing to do most of their everyday banking online."

Assuming, of course, those online services are actually working. ®

Updated at 16.51 UTC on September 2, 2024, to add:

Lloyds Banking told us:

"Our mobile app is back to normal. We're sorry some of our customers had issues viewing transactions and it may have been running slower earlier today."