Lloyds Banking Group has apologised after thousands of its customers were unable to make payments or send money due to another IT glitch.

According to Downdetector, a website that lets people track real-time service issues and outages, customers started noticing problems shortly after 11am on Wednesday, with issues affecting many of the group’s brands: Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows and MBNA.

More than three hours after the apparent outage began, some customers were still experiencing problems with the group’s mobile apps and websites.

Some customers said they needed to send money, while others said the glitch meant they could not access their accounts or buy lunch or groceries.

Some of those left in the lurch argued they should be compensated for the inconvenience.

Responding to customers on the X platform, Lloyds and Halifax said they were aware some customers were having issues with their apps and online banking, adding: “We’re really sorry about this. We’re working hard to fix it.”

Shortly before 3pm, the group issued a statement saying: “All our services are back up and running. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused, and if customers are still experiencing any issues, please leave it a few minutes and try again.”

This latest outage is embarrassing for Lloyds as it follows an incident in March when the banking group exposed the personal data of nearly 500,000 customers in an IT glitch that left people’s payments, account details and national insurance numbers visible to other users.

Lloyds blamed that glitch on a software defect introduced during an IT update to its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland mobile banking apps overnight into 12 March.

This latest incident could lead to more questions being asked about customer protections at a time when banks are continuing to close branches and push more users into digital banking.