Britain's Lloyds and Barclays bank customers suffer service outages

LONDON (Reuters) -British banks Lloyds and Barclays on Monday apologised to customers who suffered service outages over the past 48 hours, the latest in a string of such disruptions in recent years as lenders push their customers to bank online.

More than 600 Barclays customers had reported problems by 1000 GMT on Sunday, including failed payments and incorrect balances being displayed.

"The technical issue impacting our customers on Friday and over the weekend has been resolved and delayed payments processed," a spokesperson for the bank said on Monday.

The lender will work to ensure no customer suffers financial loss as a result of the issues, the bank said.

A spokesperson for the Bank of England said the central bank could not comment on individual firms, after media reports that regulators were investigating the matter.

Firms routinely report any such outages to the authorities and keep in close contact about how an incident is resolved, according to a Bank of England reference manual posted online and reviewed by Reuters.

Disruption of online services has been a persistent problem for banks in Britain in recent years, and an acute one because lenders have increasingly encouraged customers to bank online to help them reduce fixed costs.

Lloyds Banking Group separately said on Monday that some of its customers were affected by an outage preventing them from making or receiving payments, after hundreds of customers reported problems with the service.

More than 400 problems with Lloyds' service were reported on the website Downdetector, which tracks such disruptions, by 0922 GMT.

"We know some customers are having issues making or receiving payments. We're sorry for this and are working to have everything back to normal," the bank said in response to multiple customer complaints on social media platform X.

(Reporting By Lawrence WhiteEditing by Bernadette Baum and David Evans)