Metro Bank customers faced significant problems accessing their money this morning after a payment system outage caused duplicate transactions. The technical failure left some customers with unexpected overdrafts and others unable to buy essential items like food and drink.
The bank confirmed the issue and apologised for the inconvenience caused to customers. Payment services experienced delays throughout the morning, with some transactions appearing twice in customer accounts.
Customer impact stories
One customer described how her partner, a truck driver working a 14-hour shift, had no access to his money to buy food or drink since 6am. Another customer contacted the bank asking why she and her partner had both been made £280 overdrawn overnight.
A third customer posted on social media: "What is going on? All my transactions duplicated and it's leaving me with no access to funds." According to Download Detector, peak issue reporting occurred between 6:30am and 10:30am.
Bank response and services
Metro Bank issued warnings about longer waiting times for telephone banking due to high call volumes. The majority of the bank's services continued running normally, including online account opening, personal online banking, ATMs, and the main app functionality.
The Mirror reports that some transactions appeared both as pending and applied simultaneously, causing the duplicate charges. The issues were resolved but continued to cause delays in the bank's customer service operations.
Sources used: "Metro", "Birminghammail", "Mirror" Note: This article has been edited with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
