HSBC customers were left without access to cash machines and online banking earlier today after the bank's mainframe computer crashed.
The outage lasted for a couple of hours but a HSBC spokesperson said it didn't affect every customer and everything was now working again.
"About quarter to 12 this morning we did experience an issue affecting our ATM network, credit and debit cards and intermittent problems with online banking." said the spokesperson.
"This was linked to a problem with our mainframe and [although all back up and running] we are monitoring it closely to get to the route of the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again."
A similar event happened back in June when, again, customers could not withdraw cash or access their online bank accounts but the spokesperson did not draw a link between the two.
HSBC is currently upgrading its entire system under the name "One HSBC project" to move all its technology onto a single platform. The process is costing $1 billion and is expected to be completed in 2011.
