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People queue up at Barclays ATMs to withdraw 'free' cash

The weekend saw scores of people queuing up at Barclays' ATMs to withdraw 'free cash' after the bank's mobile and online services were hit by a technical breakdown.

  5 3 comments

People queue up at Barclays ATMs to withdraw 'free' cash

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

Barclays customers suffered a two-day outage on Friday and Saturday, leaving customers unable to cash their salaries or pay their bills.

Online banking, telephone support, and payments in and out of accounts were all hit, although the bank's cash machines were still functional - up to a point.

It transpired that cardholders could withdraw what appeared to be a free £250 from their account using high street ATMs. Word quickly spread on TikTok, with one user detailing an in depth explainer about how Barclays customers could utilise this glitch.

"I’m actually howling at how many people are in their pyjamas at the cash machine because of this Barclays thing," said one TikToker in Liverpool.

Police were preventing people in north London from withdrawing cash, informing the public it is not actually "free cash", as the bank confirmed that funds withdrawn would be debited from customer accounts upon resumption of normal service.

Separately, a payment outage that hit Lloyds Bank customers early on Monday morning has been fixed the bank says in a statement:

“We know some customers had issues receiving payments this morning, but this is back to normal,” a company spokesperson said. They should not make the payment again.

“Our online banking, app and telephone banking have been working as normal all morning. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

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Comments: (3)

A Finextra member 

Stupid to withdraw cash from your bank account if you have no money there. If you have money on the account the withdrawal will be debited to your account in due time. If no money in the account, there is a clear evidence trail that it was you who withdrew the cash and overdrafted your account. You end up paying all the monies back and in addition an overdraft fee. If you do not pay up, your account will be blocked and your credit history takes a serious blow. You will be without a bank card and account and good luck to find a new bank! Also good luck in trying to buy stuff via BNPL with a bad credit history, you will be declined. 

Thomas B. Normann

Thomas B. Normann CPO at MeaWallet

I think this post on linkedin answers it well: 

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/williampayments_customers-of-major-bank-try-to-withdraw-activity-7291815285487988736-VTV8

"The most likely explanation lies in Stand-In Processing (STIP), a system used by major card networks like Visa and Mastercard, as well as some modern payment processors. STIP is designed to ensure that cardholders can still make payments when their bank’s systems are unavailable due to outages or sporadic technical issues. (...) 

Once Barclays is back online, it will receive a report of approved transactions and deduct the corresponding amounts from customers’ accounts. If an account lacks sufficient funds, the bank typically places it into overdraft."

A Finextra member 

+30 years in retail banking experience is that when bank deposit accounts are offline from the transaction system, use the card payment STIP capability with sense: Do not allow people to draw cash from ATM:s or OTC outside your own branches, do not allow any gambling card payments or other high risk purchases, limit debit card payments at POS to a reasonable payment per purchase and day. The card payment STIP infra can manage quite a good set of rules that will keep +90% of your customers more or less unaffected. For your HNW customers you should be able to be more generous if you have issued premium products to them. If you do not manage the risks in a good manner, you will end up with tens of thousands overdraft cases that will clog the back-office for weeks. 

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