Global banking giant, HSBC, has confirmed that an outage at its data centre on Sunday prevented thousands of its customers from using their cash cards.
Services were offline for three hours as problems with the system's communication with card reading devices prevented transactions from ATM cash machines or shops being authorised. The cause of the problem, which hit the South and South West of England, was unknown although an investigation is ongoing.
Following a multi-billion investment in its global IT infrastructure, HSBC announced in early October that it was set to save in excess of 10 percent of its global transaction operating costs this year. Further investment is expected.