Barclays could be set to pay £12.5million in compensation to customers after IT outages in January and February blocked millions of customers from mobile and online banking.

In an enquiry by MPs, the bank confirmed 56 per cent of online payments during the outage failed due to ‘severe degradation’ of its IT systems.

The Treasury Committee, which scrutinises financial institutions found nine of the UK’s biggest banks suffered outages lasting 803 hours over the last two years, amounting to more than a month’s worth of failures.

At least 158 banking IT failure incidents affected millions of customers’ ability to access and use banking services between January 2023 and February 2025.

Barclays suffered a three day IT meltdown between January 31 and February 2 leaving millions of customers locked out of their bank accounts

This does not include the most recent outages in January and February this year, which threw customers of Barclays, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct and Nationwide into chaos as they were unable to make or receive payments into their bank accounts.

The Barclays outage lasted three days between January 31 and February 2, leaving customers unable to access funds or make payments on what was payday for many and the deadline for HMRC self-assessment tax returns – sparking fears the outage was the result of a cyber attack.

Read More

The bank said at the time the problem was due to a ‘technology issue’ rather than a cyber attack and that it was ‘very sorry for any disruption’.

Banks could now be forced to pay out millions of pounds in compensation, MPs of the Treasury Select Committee said, with Barclays facing the prospect of paying £12.5million to aggrieved customers.

The Treasury Committee, has demanded answers about IT outages from nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies, including AIB, Barclays, Bank of Ireland, Danske, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee,said: ‘For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying experience. 

‘Even when rectified relatively quickly, it can cause real panic, which is why we wanted to get a proper understanding of why unplanned banking outages happen and how banks and building societies respond.’

This is Money asked Barclays how many current account customers it has. It said it has 20million personal customers but did not specify how many of these hold Barclays current account. 

Assuming all 20million hold current accounts, they would be entitled to compensation of 63p each.  

SAVE MONEY, MAKE MONEY

Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence. Terms and conditions apply on all offers.