Monzo outage leaves thousands of UK users unable to make payments or transfers
Key Takeaways
- •More than 3,000 Monzo users reported app problems to Downdetector around midday during the outage.
- •Monzo serves over 10 million customers entirely through its smartphone app, with no branch network to fall back on when systems fail.
- •Monzo activated its fully independent backup service, Monzo Stand-in, to support card payments and transfers, though some customers reported expected transfers did not appear in their balance.
- •The disruption was Monzo's second major outage this year, following a January incident that left customers unable to access cash on the app.
- •A Treasury Committee report found nine of the UK's biggest banks and building societies were down for over 803 hours in the last two years, and the FCA and Bank of England's operational resilience regime took full effect in March 2025.
UK fintech Monzo has suffered an outage that left thousands of customers unable to use its banking services.
Monzo is one of the UK's largest digital-only banks, serving more than 10 million customers entirely through its smartphone app, with no branch network for users to fall back on when its systems fail.
The digital bank said it had “identified some issues” and initiated a stand-in backup service, which would allow users to still complete card payments and receive transfers. However, some customers continued to raise concerns on social media that the service was still not working as expected, with multiple users reporting that transfers they were expecting had not shown up in their balance.
“I’m meant to be receiving my pay early today and I can’t even access the option to do so. Please can you fix this I have things to do,” one user wrote on X.
Users who logged into the app were greeted with the message: “We’re experiencing issues. We’ll let you know when they’re resolved.”
Downdetector, which tracks banking outages, displayed a sharp rise in outage reports for Monzo around midday, as more than 3,000 users flagged issues with the app.
The disruption marks the second big outage for the fintech this year, after customers were left unable to access cash on their app in a January debacle.
Outages have continued to trouble the wider banking industry. Lloyds Banking Group — which consists of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland — suffered a “technical glitch” that led to customers seeing other users’ transactions on their mobile app.
A Treasury Committee report published last March revealed that nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies were down for over 803 hours — the equivalent of 33 days — over the last two years.
Barclays topped the list for the most outages at 33, though it had been able to reduce the length of downtime to 93 hours, shorter than some rivals. HSBC was close behind with 32 incidents, but recorded nearly double the amount of hours, at 176.
The steady drumbeat of failures has kept the issue on regulators’ agenda. Under the operational resilience regime run by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England, which came into full force in March 2025, banks must map their most important business services — including payments and online access — and be able to remain within set impact tolerances for those services when disruption strikes.
A Monzo spokesperson said: “For a short period today, we activated Monzo Stand-in, our fully independent backup bank while we investigated an issue affecting customers.
“This technical issue has been resolved, and all of our services are now back up and running. We’re sorry for any inconvenience and thank customers for their patience.”
