AWS outage disrupts Lloyds Banking Group online and mobile banking

An outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the morning of 20 October 2025 caused disruption to online and mobile banking at Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, all part of Lloyds Banking Group¹. The group confirmed that AWS issues caused the outages, and said in an updated statement that some services had since come back online, although not all had been restored¹.

The disruption was not confined to banking. AWS, described as the world's largest cloud computing provider, underpins many online platforms through its storage and database services, and the same fault took down other major apps and websites including HMRC, Snapchat and Duolingo¹.

Lloyds Banking Group posted on X:

Which? warned consumers to remain vigilant while services were being restored, noting that scammers often exploit confusion during outages by sending fake emails or texts claiming to be from banks or companies such as Amazon¹.

Large-scale outages of this kind, where multiple apps and websites are hit at once, are becoming more frequent because so many companies rely on the same cloud providers, meaning a single fault can ripple across hundreds of services¹. According to a Treasury Committee report cited by Which?, customers of the UK's major banks and building societies suffered the equivalent of more than a month of IT failures between January 2023 and February 2025¹.

Why it matters for households

Customers of the three affected brands who could not reach their accounts during the outage may have been unable to make payments or check balances. Banks are not legally required to pay compensation simply because they experience an outage or technical issue, and the system for banking differs from telecoms, where compensation is due for loss of services such as broadband¹. Compensation may be payable depending on how badly the disruption affected a customer, which can include missed bill payments leading to late payment fees or overdraft fees, and a negative effect on a credit score¹.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) can order a bank to pay compensation if it finds a customer was treated unfairly or left out of pocket, and can also require a bank to correct a credit file. The FOS can usually get involved 15 days after a concern has been raised with the bank, sometimes sooner¹. Which? advises gathering financial records, proof of contact and documents showing the impact, such as a credit score affected by missed payments, before making a formal complaint¹.

What happens next

Lloyds Banking Group said some services had come back online but not all had been restored, and that it was investigating¹. No further timetable for full restoration has been reported.