Barclays' ATMs stopped working for a time Saturday

An undisclosed number of Barclays Bank ATMs stopped working Saturday afternoon, inconveniencing cardholders who were unable to withdraw cash from the machines, said a spokesperson for the London-based bank.

Once Barclays’ employees discovered the problem, they resolved it in 20 minutes, the spokesperson added.

“We have apologized to our customers for the inconvenience,” he said. The spokesperson, however, was tightlipped about what caused the outage. Reuters, a London-based wire service, reported the bank’s computer systems failed. Last June, a systems failure at the Barclays Gloucester data center was blamed for the bank’s ATMs, online and telephone banking systems crashing, Reuters reported.

The spokesperson refused to disclose the number of ATMs that were affected and their locations. “The ATMs did not work, but customers could still get cash back at the point of sale," he added. Barclays’ cardholders could not visit the bank’s branches because most close for the weekend at 1p.m. Saturday.