Barclaycard / Barclays IT issues

FlatFour

Hey all,

Just had a declined regular payment notification from a subscription service I have, saying my Card was declined and I need to update my card details. All details are fine and current. I did some digging and find out that there was a major IT issue over the weekend apparently, impacting both Barclay Card and Barclays Bank themselves. While it's supposedly fixed now, they're still "catching up". Their online chat "help" service is still down though, as I tried to use that to speak to them earlier. Phone lines not 24/7, they closed at 6pm.

I paid my credit card bill yesterday - all confirmed as done on the Barclay Card website, transaction cleared on the Barclays Online Banking website, all fine. However, Barclay Card has gone from "payment, thank you" (however they phrase it) to "your payment is due". I paid a few days early, so I have a little grace period.

The big issue I have here is that NOWHERE on my Barclay Card account (logging in online) nor on my Barclays Online banking is there ANY mention of these IT issues and potential failed payments. Only one of my Subscriptions - the payment of which comes out on the 1st from my Barclay Card - actually failing gave any indication that something was wrong. They'll message and email me the usual marketing crap, but nothing for a major IT outage? Perhaps the system that does that was down too… would have been nice to have a heads-up once things were back up and running though…

At this time, I don't know if my Card Payment from the 1st will be processed, I don't know if the Payment to clear my Credit Card (also on the 1st) will be cleared in time. The money has gone from my current account, but Barclay Card show it as "Pending" now.

Things like this really stress me out. I fear fraud primarily, but when the company themselves gives me no heads up of their known IT issue, that's really poor service.

I didn't need to use my Credit Card today, but it would have been at best embarrassing, or at worse leaving me stranded if I was trying to get fuel. It's a little scary how much we rely on these things. Gonna get me some CASH! lol.

Has anyone else here been impacted by this IT outage? When did you find out about it?

FlatFour

I did some more digging in to this, and it looks like something similar happened around the same time last year. Searching now shows that all is well with their services, so I can only hope my outstanding transactions get processed tomorrow.

Judging by the lack of replies here, I'm guessing it's not impacted everyone.

Edit: I just had to log on and check again. My account is once again showing as my credit card paid off. As it did when I originally paid it on the 1st, but not "pending" as it was showing earlier of course.

There is one weird discrepancy though: I had a charge refunded a little over a week ago, so my balance to clear went down vs the original statement, as you'd expect. I paid off this new balance (pay balance in full option). However, now it's showing that I need to pay an additional £0 by Feb 6th to clear my balance. I think the system has gotten very confused by this refund!

So, not the numbers involved, but to illustrate the issue:

Original bill was £100. I got a £10 refund so now it's £90 for the month. That's the transaction total shown. I use the "pay full bill" (or whatever it's called) option, which is for the £90. That transaction has now gone through. However, it's now saying I need to pay £0 more to clear the £100 balance. This is a very badly written bit of software if a refund confuses it so.

I am a little disturbed that I can find no reference to the problems over the weekend any more. Reported of the issues last year at this time are abundant, but the one I found quite readily yesterday (2nd Feb) are gone. There are a few reports on down detector, but no details.

I find credit cards and online banking are usually things that just work for the most part. But having payments refused - and even attempting to pay the bill suddenly reverting to "pending" - is a little worrying. I use my credit card for so much, like most do I expect, but not critical bills have been impacted yet. Just something where being a couple of days late doesn't have an impact.

Note that I just have the one Credit Card, same as I always have, so there's not really a "use another card" option for me.

ProcessMatters

This does sound like a back-end reconciliation issue after the outage, especially with refunds in the mix. I’ve seen similar where the display lags behind the actual cleared position for a day or two. As long as the payment shows as received and the balance is back to zero, it usually sorts itself without any action needed.

daveyjp

A couple of weekends ago there was an issue with their 2 stage authentification. Payments which were approved on their app weren't being released.

FlatFour

I did some more digging today…

Phoned BarclayCard and all is well with my card from their perspective, it's not blocked or anything like that. They did say they've had a lot of calls regarding payments to this particular company the past few days. From BarclayCard's perspective, they consider it a "vendor error", i.e. some problem vendor side taking payments. The card is fine. Worked ok with other transactions last month. Not had need to use it outside of this subscription yet this month though.

Digging further, I spoke to the vendor in question and they (just a support rep for them) had an unexpected response.. They were aware of issues affecting lots of people with their Subscription through Barclays or BarclayCard. They said that Barclays / BarclayCard had flagged them as a gambling company, and blocked payments. They're a charity first and foremost, but you can win prizes (OMAZE). So, they're a lottery or raffle of sorts I guess.

The BarclayCard agent I spoke to didn't mention this, perhaps it's not visible to them. However the OMAZE agent said they've had a lot of calls about this. They suggest just using another card, but I'm not doing that. I asked, well, more a statement really, that their higher-ups are of course trying to resolve this with Barclays/BarclayCard, the agent confirmed this.

What a crazy sequence of events though. Payment error, both with paying a vendor and clearing the CC balance, Google search shows IT issues over the weekend. Ok, that explains it. Dig deeper and find out there's more to it. Perhaps "IT Errors" does sort of cover what's going on. Computer says no, to OMAZE sort of thing…

OMAZE suggested I call BarclayCard again, but I'm NOT playing the go-between, they can sort this out between themselves. Hopefully they can get it resolved. It should automatically try to take the payment again, but I can do a manual "pay now" attempt… though it doesn't actually tell you if it worked or not lol.

I do wonder if I'll ever know what's really going on here.

AI did find this:

"Gambling" or "High-Risk" Classifications: Some card issuers restrict payments to sites they deem to be in the gaming, lottery, or gambling category, particularly if using a credit card. While Omaze is a raffle, some financial institutions might classify it under similar rules.

If this had been a new transaction for me, it'd make more sense, however, I've been doing this for a while now. AI also said:

Solution - Contact Barclaycard: Call the number on the back of your card to confirm the transaction is legitimate, which allows them to lift the block.

This wasn't an option. There was nothing to confirm or authorise on my part. BarclayCard's system showed it as a vendor issue, no action possible to force the transaction through sort of thing.

Going 100% on what both BarclayCard and OMAZE agents are telling me of course.

AstonSmith

Slightly off-topic but I blocked gambling on all my debit cards because I don't gamble, and it might help if my card was stolen. I found that some non-gambling retailers, such as Steam (the online games store) and Apple (for in-app purchases) became blocked. There wasn't an explanation, just a flat "declined". All those worked again when I removed the gambling restriction, after the mandatory wait of course.

So I'd side with the vendor's explanation based on my personal experiences.

FlatFour

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81868753#Comment_81868753

I didn't even know it was possible to do such a thing. I do the lottery from time to time, and I also use Steam, GoG and Epic What I might do, based on this information, is speak to BarclayCard again perhaps, as it looks as if they've changed something perhaps. Annoying if that's the case, as they made no mention of such things when I spoke to them earlier today. Thanks for the information.

noitsnotme

They're a charity first and foremost, but you can win prizes (OMAZE)

Omaze are not a charity. They are a profit making company that donate a proportion of their profit to charities.

FlatFour

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81869141#Comment_81869141

Well, yes, the same as the Lottery etc. they do give to charity. I suppose they're a "fund raiser" so to speak. They still give to good causes, with the draw being prizes of course. I'm sure those in charge draw a healthy salary though… though, from what I've read, Omaze give a significantly higher portion of the takings to charity.

Anyway, an update. BarclayCard is still blaming Omaze, Omaze is still blaming BarclayCard. BarclayCard said that they could clear the transaction… for an additional fee. Which strongly implies that there is something BarclayCard could do here, and they are treating Omaze as a "unapproved" (all of a sudden) gambling site. For whatever reason, Omaze has been flagged, and transactions are not being processed any more.

BarclayCard said they are working on getting the issue resolved - but it's not their issue, is it? So we'll see what happens.

I know credit cards other than BarclayCard are still working fine. As are debit cards.

FlatFour

Update: Looks like they finally fixed the issue, whatever it actually was.

Logged in today and saw that the payment had finally been taken after several failed attempts. None of these failed attempts were visible to me in my BarclayCard account, but BarclayCard support could see them.