Barclays begins paying up to £100 compensation to customers after banking outage

Barclays customers have started to receive compensation after an IT outage disrupted many of their banking services on 31 January.

The outage continued until 2 February, and left many customers unable to receive and spend their paychecks. The incident coincided with some customers’ paydays as well as the HMRC self-assessment tax return deadline.

Last month, Barclays said they expected to pay between £5 million and £7.5 million in compensation to customers hit by this set of outages.

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Most affected customers who are eligible for compensation should have received payment from Barclays yesterday or today, though some will take longer due to the complexity of individual cases.

The compensation paid ranges up to £100, though amounts have been determined on a case-by-case basis.

In a letter to the Treasury Select Committee in February, Barclays said: “We are deeply sorry for the impact this incident has had on our customers who were not able to access some of our services during the incident period.”

Am I entitled to compensation from Barclays?

If you are a Barclays customer and your normal banking activities were disrupted during the January/February IT outage, such as it meant you couldn’t pay a bill and were hit with late payments, you could be in line for compensation.

If you will be receiving a payout in this wave of payments, you can expect to receive a letter in the post telling you that compensation is on its way.

When the compensation is paid, it will appear on your bank statement with the reference “Barclays UK Refu”.

If you believe you are eligible for compensation, but did not receive any, then you can contact Barclays customer service.

What other banking outages have occurred?

There have been at least 158 banking IT failures since January 2023, amounting to least 803 hours of disruption to customers, according to the Treasury Select Committee.

The list of banks and building societies to have suffered outages include HSBC, Santander, Nationwide, NatWest, and Lloyds.

If your banking services were disrupted as a result of an IT outage, you may be able to get compensation.

As well as Barclays, Nationwide has also paid out £77,452 in the last two years, and NatWest has paid £348,000 to customers in the same time period.

Different banks will have different eligibility criteria that you have to fit, and you may not get any compensation.

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