by Our News Desk

FINANCE regulators were urged yesterday to take tougher action on banks after an IT glitch at HSBC left hundreds of thousands of customers unable to access their money.

Around 275,000 payments, likely to total hundreds of millions of pounds, were held up by technical problems with HSBC’s systems.

The glitch has caused particular anger as it came on the day many people receive their salaries and ahead of the bank holiday weekend.

The fault affecting payments relates to the way HSBC transmits information to the national Bacs payment system and centred on payments such as invoices and salaries which should have gone out automatically overnight.

Consumer advocacy group Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: “Banks have suffered a series of unacceptable failures with their IT systems in recent years and this latest one at HSBC will do little to reassure consumers that banks are making improvements.

“It’s essential that regulators continue to take tough action to ensure banks properly maintain the payments system we all rely on and we expect HSBC to fully compensate anyone affected.”

The Bank of England has been alerted to the glitch and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it would ensure the bank took steps to help those left short.

Insurance and legal recruiter IPS Group managing director Alan Charlesworth took to Twitter to complain: “None of my staff have been paid. HSBC when will this be sorted?”

Lydia Smith tweeted: “HSBC UK where’s my money? I didn’t get paid my wages today and I have bills to pay.”

An HSBC spokesman apologised for the inconvenience caused.

Bacs processes transactions worth around £50 billion every day.