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UK consumer group says digital banking outages underscore need for cash

March 4, 2019

British banks experience an average of 1.2 IT or security failures daily that prevent customers from making payments, according to Which, a U.K. consumer watchdog organization.

According to a press release, the consumer advocacy group found 302 incidents that prevented customers from making payments from April through December 2018. Since last April, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has required banks to inform them of any major operational or security incident that prevents customers from using payment services.

The average number of major disruptions across each of the 30 banks and building societies in the Which analysis was one a month – with six of the major banks suffering at least one outage every two weeks.

Barclays reported the most major incidents (41) — more than one per week during the nine-month period, as did Lloyds Bank (37) and Halifax/Bank of Scotland (31). Natwest (26) and RBS (21) rounded out the top five.

Which said its findings demonstrate the need for U.K. banks to provide ready access to cash through ATMs: 

The stark findings reveal that serious banking crashes are even more common than previously thought and highlight the need for the government to step in and give a single regulator the statutory duty to protect access to cash and build a sustainable cash infrastructure for the U.K. — a vital backup while digital banking is so vulnerable to failure.

The latest findings from Which, along with incidents such as last year’s Europe-wide Visa payments outage, suggest that Britain’s financial system has a long way to go before it will be resilient enough to support a no-cash society, the release said.