HSBC suffers IT hardware glitch

Customers were unable to withdraw cash or use debit cards

HSBC suffered an IT hardware glitch yesterday which meant that its customers were unable to withdraw cash or pay for goods.

Customers took to Twitter to voice their frustration and HSBC's UK press office Twitter account responded by saying it was "working on fixing the issues as soon as possible".

"For a short period of time on the evening of Sunday 20th May, an IT hardware failure which supported some ATM and debit card transactions meant that a small minority of HSBC customers were unable to withdraw cash or pay for goods," HSBC said in a statement.

HSBC said that the failure first affected customers who were using ATMs other than HSBC's own ATM service and that customers were declined funds from 5pm onwards. It said that the full ATM service was restored after 45 minutes.

However, the bank said that "as a side effect of the ATM failure" its debit card users experienced a point of sale transaction decline yesterday evening.

Visa accepted debit card transactions for a limited amount of time, so many transactions could still go through, but the debit card issue took longer to resolve and full service was restored after 7pm.

HSBC said it could not predict the volume of people who were affected and would not comment further on the technical reasons behind the glitch.