After widespread outages on its app and website, Barclays has been ordered to pay out a total £12.5 million in compensation to those affected.
In February, a number of banks’ mobile payment systems went down due to an an ‘industry-wide’ IT failure, causing further disruption for Barclays customers who were left without access to their accounts the previous month.
According to the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) of MPs, Barclays is expected to pay out between £5 million and £7.5 million for the ‘inconvenience or distress’ of the outages earlier this year, on top of £5 million for other issues between January 2023 and February 2025.
While the bank has not released the exact number hit by these glitches, it has over 13 million digitally active customers in the UK and processes over 40% of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions.
An estimated 5% of login attempts failed during the January outages, which lasted several days. However, among those that successfully logged in, 17% attempted to submit a payment, 56% which failed.
Further outages were reported yesterday, but they did not reach the scale of the disruption reported in January.
Essentially, a vast number of people will be eligible for a share of the compensation. Could you be one of them? And how do you go about claiming what you’re owed?
Who is eligible for Barclays compensation?
Anyone who was left out of pocket by the outages could be entitled to compensation, with Barclays working to identify all those affected before paying out in stages.
Although no figures have been released, the exact amount you can expect to receive (and when you’ll receive it) will likely depend on the level of financial impact you suffered.
‘We have been taking a proactive approach to customer complaints since the incident occurred and have dealt with as many of these as possible at the first point of contact into the bank,’ the bank said in its letter to the TSC.
‘We will continue to prioritise those customers with vulnerable characteristics or those in vulnerable circumstances.’
How to claim Barclays outage compensation
Barclays claims it hopes to help ‘avoid customers having to make a complaint’ by using internal data to establish which account holders experienced errors.
From there, they’ll get in touch, explaining: ‘In some cases, this will involve an automated refund and in other cases we will contact customers to either provide additional information or confirm the action we are taking.’
In the meantime, however, Money Saving Expert recommends getting in touch with Barclays if you believe you’re entitled to money back for costs incurred and potentially compensation.
‘Explain the impact the outage had on you,’ advises the consumer finance site. ‘For example, if you’ve suffered emotionally or been inconvenienced as a result.’
MSE adds: ‘There are no guarantees you’ll get anything, but Barclays told us it will review each customer’s complaint on a case-by-case basis and will look at all options to resolve the issue, which may include compensation.’
The bank also urges people to contact them directly if they wish to make a complaint, and claims these will be dealt with ‘as quickly as possible’.
‘Our expectation is that complaints will be handled in line with our regulatory requirements (with the vast majority within three days),’ continued the TSC response.
‘If there are some complex cases, there may be a small number that may take longer.’
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