HSBC app down as thousands left frustrated by lack of banking service (2024)

HSBC (Image: Getty)

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It took until 9:27am for HSBC to report the fault to its customers. Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, the bank said: "We’re really sorry that some customers are having issues accessing personal online and mobile banking. Our IT teams are working hard to get these services back to normal. You can still authorise online card purchases via SMS."

HSBC also posted the same message to its Facebook page. Many frustrated customers took to social media to ask what was wrong and to complain about the lack of services.

"@HSBC_UK please can you advise when your app / online banking will be up and running again? I need to know if money that gets transferred to an HSBC account will go through ok! We have mortgage payments and bills to pay out!", said X user @maryjanesdesk.

"Hi, cant access my HSBC account either - called the customer service line and they are "clueless" - they have their head in the sand denying there are any issues! Come on HSBC, large global bank - Shame on you!!!", said @ZakUK.

At 12:15pm, HSBC posted the below messages on X, saying customers could now log in to their accounts but warned them other parts of the service remained not working.

According to HSBC's official UK X account, the bank last experienced issues with its online services on 4 May. This morning, the account had also replied to some posts from customers saying, "Morning, can you please join me in a private message so that I can look into this for you?", before later confirming its teams were working on a fix.

"Come on @HSBC_UK, at least acknowledge there's an issue this morning. Or don't you clock on and start working until 9am? Lucky you!", quipped @JamFirstPlease.

Some customers reported seeing 'Error code API_103' when faced with their app not working. HSBC said to one person on X who reported this that "our IT team is still looking into this error code. Once we have more information, we will provide an update on our social media pages. Thanks for your patience."

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It is relatively common for banking apps and services to go offline from time to time. It's usually a technical fault with the bank or bank's technology partners, but even after issues are fixed it is rare for the bank to confirm to customers what the problem was.

While it appears that today is payday for many of the HSBC's affected customers, it is rare for banks to offer any kind of compensation for their online services being unavailable.

"Online and mobile banking outages create disruption and always seem to come at the worst possible time - like payday - which only adds to the impact on a bank’s customers," Hicham Mabchour, VP UK at software firm Dynatrace told Express.co.uk.

"Whenever an outage arises, banks need to be able to instantly trace the issue back to the precise root cause, rather than waste hours scrambling to find the problem.

"Part of the challenge in preventing outages is that there are so many problems that can lead to IT outages, including hardware failures, software bugs, cyber-attacks, and human error. Banks urgently need to update the way they monitor their systems, so when outages occur, they can restore their services much faster and minimize the impact of potential disruptions on their customers."

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