Problem with BACS payment system means salaries have not arrived for many customers as bank faces barrage of complaints

Thousands of people have been left without their salaries because of an IT glitch at HSBC that means employers who use its business banking accounts cannot make payments.



Some 275,000 individual payments failed to go through on Friday leaving potentially hundreds of thousands of people without their pay on the Friday before the bank holiday weekend.

The bank has suffered a problem with the electronic payments system its business banking customers use to make, among other things, salary payments.

A history of UK banks' system failures Read more

“None of our 150 staff have been paid, which before a long weekend is a disaster,” the owner of one business told the Guardian. “HSBC is very non-committal as to whether any monies will clear between now and Tuesday when the banks reopen, and it’s causing a huge concern for our young workforce who were relying on their pay before the bank holiday.”

She added: “Most have been forced to go over their overdrafts and some will literally be left with no funds until it’s resolved.”

Carl Chapman, who runs an IT services business in London, said none of his 130 staff had been paid. “We obviously pushed all the right buttons to make payments a few days ago and assumed HSBC would do its bit. We discovered instead at about 7.30 on Friday morning that none of our staff had received their money.”

Chapman said the firm had paid its employees “emergency funds” but that he is still awaiting a response from the bank.



Meanwhile, employees of firms that bank with HSBC are experiencing a myriad of problems ranging from bounced payments and overdraft charges to having to make new plans for the bank holiday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carl Chapman

Kira Lauber, a senior content and online PR manager from Harrogate who is due to get married in May 2016 told The Guardian that the bank’s problems may have ruined her wedding.

“Sunday is the last day that we can pay the £1,500 instalment that we need to secure our wedding venue,” she said. “I now don’t have this money and neither does my fiance. This is our dream venue and has a lot of sentimental value as it is where we went on our first date.”

She said that she is also due to make the first payment on her wedding dress on Tuesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kira Lauber with her Fiancé Paul Feather. Photograph: Kira Lauber

“I’m not sure that we are even going to have the money by then,” she said.

David McGregor, who works in sales for digital marketing company Emarsys, has not had his salary paid because his employer banks with HSBC. He said that he “woke up to a nightmare” when he realised he had no money to pay the rental deposit for a new flat that he is meant to move in to on Saturday.

“I have no idea what I am going to do as I have to pay £2,000 tomorrow that I now don’t have. I have asked HSBC what to do and they have simply said ‘follow us on Twitter for updates’.”

The bank said that 275,000 payments have been affected, including payments to customers of other banks. It said in a statement: “There has been a fault in the information used to process some payments from HSBC business customers.

“We are taking immediate steps to ensure the payments reach beneficiaries as quickly as possible. We will work with other banks to ensure that customers do not lose out as a result of today’s problems.”

Salaries are not the only payments affected by the IT failure. Businesses that bank with HSBC are finding that they are unable to pay their suppliers, with the online banking facilities temporarily closed.

Charlotte Abbot, who runs PrintHut.co.uk based in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, says she has been deeply frustrated by her inability to make payments this morning.



“I can’t pay any of our suppliers at the moment. I need to pay a few this morning, and it it keeps coming up with error warnings online.”

Hundreds of people have already taken to Twitter to express their concern.

The problems appeared to have started in the early hours of Friday morning, although as recently as 8.30am the bank was tweeting people to say it was not aware of the problem.

Doug Silkstone from Bristol told the Guardian: “We normally get paid at midnight on the last working day of the month. This means that the problem probably started from sometime on Thursday evening.

“For me it’s a real problem because I have repayments, rent and overdraft fees to worry about, as well as a bank holiday weekend to miss out on.”

The bank has told its customers that it is having a problem with Bacs payments. Direct debits and deposits are made using Bacs, the system that is responsible for the electronic processing of financial transactions within the UK.

