According to a report by UK broadsheet The Guardian, around 100 business banking customers customers have been affected by the glitch, which causes online payments to be misdirected.

An Abbey spoekeswoman told the paper that the problem was due to a "design flaw" rather than a security glitch.

The report says the the accounts affected are those were more than one user has access. Abbey's system stores a list of bill payments for each individual user, rather than a central list for each account, but a flaw in the system sometimes causes these lists to become "unsynchronised".

This has resulted in some customers unintentionally making payments to a different recipient than intended, says the report.

Abbey says it will ensure that customers do not incur any financial loss as a result of the issue.

Last month Abbey was forced to apologise after a computer glitch resulted in thousands of customers having their overdrafts cancelled.

The bank's system failed to renew certain overdraft limits at the beginning of May and as a result some customers were wrongly hit with unauthorised overdraft fees and other charges.