Tesco Bank suffers glitch, leaves 5.6m customers unable to access accounts

Tesco Bank said: "We apologise to customers who are currently unable to access mobile and online banking. All other services are working as normal. We are working hard to restore service and thank customers for their patience."

The lender's latest IT woes were not new, having suffered another glitch back in November 2016 due to a "sophisticated attack" that took money from 20,000 accounts, although this time around it has refused to disclose if the glitch was accidental or provoked.

More recently, TSB and Visa had fallen afoul of the IT gods.

A spokeswoman for the bank later told the BBC: "We apologise to customers who were unable to access online and mobile banking earlier today. These services are now working as normal and we would like to thank customers for their patience."