HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest bank, said about 275,000 payments from U.K. business customers haven’t been made on the final business day of the month, when many salaries in the country are paid.
“There has been a fault in the information used to process some payments from HSBC business customers,” including “payments to customers of other banks,” the company said in a statement Friday. “HSBC apologizes for the inconvenience this has caused. 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.”
The problem is with the BACS system, which processes electronic payments, the bank said in an earlier
The Bank of England said it’s in contact with HSBC regarding the problem and will be working with the lender to resolve the issue.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc suffered a payments glitch in June, affecting 600,000 credit and direct-debit transactions, only seven months after it was fined 56 million pounds ($88 million) by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority for a computer failure that left millions of customers without access to their accounts for weeks.
