Tesco Bank's chief executive said on Monday that it was temporarily stopping online transactions after about 20,000 customers had money removed from their accounts after an attack by fraudsters over the weekend.



The bank, wholly owned by supermarket chain Tesco, said it had discovered there had been "significant" fraudulent criminal activity on customers' current accounts late on Saturday and early Sunday morning.

Benny Higgins, the bank's chief executive, said 40,000 of current accounts had experienced suspicious transactions and about half had money taken from their account.