The bank's computer systems failed early on Saturday hitting Internet and telephone banking customers as well as ATMs. However, contrary to some reports, Barclays says point of sale transactions were not affected.

The bank claims the problem was resolved "early" that afternoon, although a Reuters report suggests customers were still having trouble accessing online accounts as late as 7.15 pm.

Contacted by Finextra, Barclays refused to comment on the cause of the problem or say how many customers were affected.

Last June a storage disc array fault at Barclays' Gloucester data centre was blamed for ATMs and online and telephone banking systems crashing.