Payday banking outages will happen again but are unlikely to occur tomorrow, according to a banking technology expert.

Online banking failures on the final Friday of the last two months, payday for many, were seen as millions of customers of different institutions were locked out of accounts or unable to send or receive payments.

At the end of January, Barclays experienced problems in branches and online for days, while in February issues – which did not appear to be related – were encountered by Lloyds, Halifax, Nationwide, TSB, Bank of Scotland and First Direct.

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Similar outages “will absolutely happen again”, said Paul Taylor, chief executive of bank technology company Thought Machine, which sells cloud computing solutions to the banking industry.

Given the attention generated by the last two paydays, Mr Taylor said his guess is this Friday will be safe as every bank’s chief information officer is “super aware” of the day and that “it would be devastating for reputation if anything happened”.

The troubles, however, are not unique to the last two paydays but have just been more visible and complained about, Mr Taylor told Sky News.

“My guess is that we’re talking about visibility, not occurrence. I’m aware of bank problems on paydays for many years.”

Through his job, Mr Taylor said he speaks to a major bank every day and counts Lloyds Banking Group as a client.

Why are glitches happening?

These issues will continue to arise as lenders grapple with “creaking infrastructure”, Mr Taylor said.

“The sheer volume of payments can overwhelm the bank, and that’s why it’s particularly susceptible on this [pay] day”.

“The problem that banks have is that the systems are old and the systems are fragile”, he said.

“One problem causes a knock-on effect, and that knock-on effect ripples through the bank, and then the end result is on payday that the payments don’t get made”.

Solving the issue is expensive and time-consuming, he added, even for banks that have enjoyed higher profits in recent years, thanks to elevated interest rates.

Many banks are moving to more modern infrastructure, Mr Taylor said, but it takes time and banks don’t want to get it wrong.

But some are “so entrenched in this legacy technology”, he said.

The UK banks are “not that bad” when compared to international competition and each spend billions on IT every year, Mr Taylor caveated.

Despite this, no banks contacted by Sky News said glitches wouldn’t happen again.

What went wrong on paydays?

And when banks were asked what caused the glitches last payday, none responded with an explanation.

After parts of Barclays were down in January, the phenomenon began being investigated by the influential Treasury Committee of MPs.

As part of this, banks were asked to outline the outages they’ve experienced and why.

In the days before the February payday, nine top UK banks told the committee typical reasons for failures included problems with third-party suppliers, disruption caused by systems changes and internal software malfunctions.

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Those companies had a total of 803 hours of unplanned outages over the last two years, they said, equivalent to 33 days, comprised of 158 individual IT failures.

What have banks said?

TSB and Natwest referred Sky News to the banking lobby group UK Finance, which said it did not know what was behind the past two payday problems.

“The banking industry invests significantly in the resilience of systems and technology,” UK Finance’s managing director of operational resilience David Raw told Sky News.

“The ongoing investment means incidents which cause significant disruption happen very rarely,” he said

“Incidents can be short in duration, but if an issue does arise the bank will always work extremely hard to rectify it as quickly as possible and minimise the customer impact.”

Santander UK said it was not affected by the last two payday outages. “We have robust systems in place to ensure that our services remain operational for customers,” a spokesperson said.

“Since January 2023, our services have been available to customers for 99.9% of the time. When there is a disruption, our priority is to minimise its impact and restore services as quickly as possible and support customers through our alternative channels and ensure that no customer is left out of pocket as a result.”

A spokesperson for HSBC, which also owns First Direct, said: “We continue to invest in our operational resilience to provide the best possible service for our customers”.

“The end of each month brings increased transaction volumes and heightened demand across the banking services industry, and so we plan accordingly – enhancing system capacity as well as limiting non-essential, back-end system changes and updates.”

Nationwide, The Co-operative Bank, Lloyds – who also own the Halifax and Bank of Scotland brands – did not respond to Sky News’s request.

Barclays did not comment.

Emmanuel Macron has announced a plan for a “reassurance force” with several countries in Ukraine – but not all European allies have backed the idea.

The French president said some nations disagreed on the proposed deployment of an armed force to back up an eventual peace deal in Ukraine, with only some wanting to take part.

“It is not unanimous,” he said during a news conference after the third summit of the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Thursday, with leaders meeting in Paris to coordinate their stance.

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But Mr Macron said France and the UK, who are driving the initiative, will work with Ukrainian counterparts to decide where the contingents could be deployed in Ukraine.

“We do not need unanimity to achieve it,” he said.

The summit hosting the leaders of nearly 30 countries, plus NATO and European Union chiefs, comes at a crucial point in the war, which has lasted more than three years.

Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer – who was also at the meeting – has said Vladimir Putin must be given a deadline to make progress on a Ukraine ceasefire.

Following the summit, the prime minister spoke at a news conference at the UK ambassador’s residence in Paris and accused the Russian president of “playing games” and “playing for time”.

He told reporters he would like to see a peace deal in Ukraine develop in a matter of days and weeks instead of months.

When questioned about the “reassurance force”, Sir Keir said it was “designed to deter” Mr Putin and defend whatever peace deal is agreed.

He added: “This will require the engagement and support of the United States”.

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However, Mr Macron was more cautious, suggesting they may have to do without American backing. “We have to be prepared for a situation where perhaps they won’t join in,” he said.

While there were no details about which nations would contribute military assets, Sir Keir did confirm the coalition had “200 planners from 30 countries”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a positive reaction to the summit, adding there were “a number of countries who are prepared – either through the air or with boots on the ground – to provide security guarantees to Ukraine”.

Sir Keir also confirmed that Parliament would “have a say” if British troops were deployed on a long-term basis.

Donald Trump has said he wants to broker a swift end to the war. But a series of bilateral talks between the US and the warring sides has yet to yield significant results.

Agreements brokered by the US to safeguard shipping in the Black Sea and to halt long-range strikes on energy infrastructure have been widely welcomed as a first step toward peace.

But Ukraine and Russia have disagreed over the details and accused each other of violating the deals.

Child poverty is set to increase under a Labour government for the first time in history and an “alternative path” is needed to stop the rise of Reform UK, Sir Keir Starmer has been warned.

A joint statement signed by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other cross-party MPs calls for a wealth tax on those with assets over £10m “so we can rebuild our schools and hospitals”.

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The letter, in response to Rachel Reeves’s spring statement, says the chancellor has made a “choice” to push more disabled people and children into poverty by announcing departmental spending cuts while increasing money invested into defence.

“This isn’t about scarcity, it’s about priorities”, it said, adding: “This is set to be the first Labour government in history under which child poverty increases.

“Labour’s failure has paved the way for Reform. We need an alternative path.

“Parroting the rhetoric of Reform UK on migrants, minorities and Muslims just endorses their scapegoating and makes society worse for us all.”

As well as Mr Corbyn, who is now an independent MP, the statement was signed by suspended Labour MPs Sarah Zultana and Apsana Begum, Green MPs, independents and other figures calling for “progressive politics”.

It comes ahead of the launch of Reform UK’s local election campaign on Friday, with the party hoping to make gains in May after overtaking Labour in multiple polls.

The letter describes the “alternative path” as one where the richest in society and multinational companies face higher taxes, rent controls are brought in, water and energy are nationalised and money is invested “in welfare, not warfare”.

These measures have previously been ruled out by Ms Reeves, but she is coming under pressure following her spring statement on Wednesday.

Spring statement takeaways

The economic update included a £2.2bn increase in defence spending over the next year to help the government reach its goal of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2027.

The chancellor also deepened previously announced welfare cuts alongside further departmental spending reductions to make up for £10bn in lost fiscal headroom since her October budget, caused by poor growth and global instability.

The government’s own impact assessment estimates another 250,000 people – including 50,000 children – could be pushed into relative poverty by 2030 because of the measures.

However Ms Reeves said that assessment did not take into account steps the government was taking to get people back into work. She has also rejected a separate analysis that suggests the average family could be £1,400 a year worse off by the end of the decade.

Labour MPs unhappy

Several Labour MPs have spoken out against the cuts and some have said they will vote against them. However Ms Reeves is believed to have staved off a full-scale rebellion for now, as most trust she is serious about getting the nation’s finances back on track.

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The chancellor is determined to stick to her self-imposed fiscal rules, including using tax receipts rather than borrowing to account for day-to-day spending.

However she may come under pressure to change course if global factors like Donald Trump’s trade war eat into her fiscal headroom again by the time of the next budget in October – meaning she would have to raise taxes or announce further spending cuts in order to balance the books.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned tax rises are likely in the autumn as Ms Reeves has left herself vulnerable to forecast changes, speculating that pensioners and the wealthiest could be targeted in the raid.

Earlier this week, a YouGov poll found three quarters of the British public would support tax rises on the very richest over expected cuts to public spending, including a 2% wealth tax on net assets worth more than £10m.