HSBC Restores UK Online Banking After Midday Outage

HSBC restored access to its mobile and online banking platforms in the United Kingdom after a disruption that began at about 11:00 BST on Wednesday and left thousands of customers unable to view accounts or make digital transactions. The bank said card payments, telephone banking and branch services were unaffected. Outage-tracking website Downdetector logged a surge of complaints during the incident, which lasted roughly two hours. HSBC apologised for the failure, described the issue as a technical fault and said engineers worked “as a matter of urgency” to resolve it, announcing a full recovery shortly after 15:00 BST. The breakdown adds to scrutiny of the resilience of British retail banks’ IT systems. A parliamentary report in March found nine leading lenders suffered more than 800 hours of unplanned outages over the previous two years, disrupting access for millions of customers.