Some U.K. banks have yet again been hit by an IT outage that rendered clients unable to access their accounts information or process payments for credit card bills, the Financial Times reported.
The outage was caused by a "hardware-related issue" faced by U.S. payments company TSYS that affected the systems of banks including Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, Nationwide Building Society and Tesco Personal Finance PLC.
Some customers of RBS and unit National Westminster Bank PLC started reporting problems early Aug. 19. The disruption continued Aug. 20, the report noted.
U.K. lenders have been under intense scrutiny due to frequent troubles with their IT systems, which are often provided by third-party companies, the FT noted. In 2018, TSB Banking Group PLC suffered from a prolonged IT meltdown due to a failed integration process, while RBS itself was fined £56 million by British regulators in 2014 over the breakdown of its IT system in 2012, which lasted for several weeks and affected more than 6.5 million customers in the U.K.
