Glitch hits Barclays cash machines

Thousands of Barclays customers were left without cash or access to their accounts over the weekend as a number of the bank's systems failed.

After customers were left without cash at tills on Saturday, the bank restored its services yesterday, with a source close to the group saying that a power failure had caused problems for 20 minutes. However, reports on Saturday indicated that the network problems began at 12.30pm and were still not resolved by the evening. Seven hours after the problems began, the Reuters news service was told the problem was "ongoing".

Earlier this month, Barclays agreed a deal with the cash machine group NCR to manage about 550 of its ATMs. A spokeswoman for NCR refused to comment yesterday. Barclays has about 3,500 machines in the UK.