HSBC Bank: FAIL

newsguy 0 1K Views

Where would we be without the hole in the wall, that magical machine that provides us with cash whenever we need it? Where would we be without online banking, that magical system that lets us pay our bills via the Web? Customers of the HSBC bank in the UK found out over the weekend when it suffered an ATM network outage that caused them both to FAIL.

I know, being an HSBC customer myself and attempting to make a couple of bill payments on Sunday only to be met with an 'I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That' style message. Trouble is this was not some science fiction computer, this was a network operated by one the biggest banking groups in the world. FAIL should not be in the dictionary as far as it is concerned.

HSBC has apologised to all customers and promised that a "full investigation is currently underway" in order to find out what went wrong but that could take several weeks to complete. I cannot help but wonder if this was due to the ongoing common platform business integration process that is underway at HSBC, known as One HSBC?

Dani AI

Generated

On the ATM/online outage reported by and the cash‑stress context raised by , the most useful contribution is a short, practical set of steps for affected customers and for the teams that operate payment systems. The notes below avoid assigning blame and focus on evidence preservation, safe workarounds, and hardening operational practice.

  • Customers and personal finance:

    • Preserve evidence: save screenshots, ATM receipts, timestamps and any error text or reference numbers.
    • Treat recent online actions as unconfirmed until the bank provides written confirmation; avoid duplicating payments if possible.
    • Use phone or branch channels as fallbacks and get an incident reference number for every call.
    • Keep a small emergency cash buffer or alternative payment method for critical bills.
    • If money is lost or debited twice, follow the bank complaint process and retain all documentation; escalate to the appropriate ombudsman/regulator if unresolved.

  • Operational / IT checklist for banks and vendors:

    • Rapidly define scope, isolate affected components, and fail over to redundant paths where available.
    • Preserve logs, config snapshots and timing data immediately for root‑cause analysis.
    • Enforce an immediate change freeze; consider rolling back recent changes if evidence points that way.
    • Communicate frequently and clearly via a status page and customer channels; transparency reduces repeat contacts.
    • After recovery, run a post‑incident review, publish lessons learned, and validate failover and migration procedures with live drills.

Practical, well‑documented incident playbooks and regular failover testing reduce impact when large platform changes or routine operations encounter problems.

Member Avatar for CarliZ
CarliZ 0 Newbie Poster

I admit that my life almost revolves around money. Everything I do is conveyed with money. And my life is worse now that we are still experiencing the financial crisis. We all need financial help at times. Financial help can come in many forms – a paycheck, a tax return check (love the Earned Income Credit!), a loan of some sort like a payday loan. There are a lot of different things can help to fix money problems. The bottom line is cash; we all need a little now and again, even if it's cash for fun or for a vacation or if we came up short and we have the power bill to contend with. There are many options to consider when you need a helping hand, whether you want to go to a bank or use a credit card or a cash advance for some financial help.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview