IT glitch exposes a major flaw in our cashless society

You know the old adage about it being better to stash your money under the bed than in the bank?

- JAMES MOORE

We wouldn't recommend stuffing your life savings into a suitcase, but it might be worth keeping a couple of hundred ready to go - because even our cashless society isn't immune to an IT glitch.

On Friday, Barclays became the latest financial institution to be the subject of a major IT outage: for three days, Barclaycard apps, online banking and services, cards, payments and transfers, branches and telephone banking were all “areas affected”. Worse still, the problem emerged on a Friday – payday for many Britons.

As of Sunday morning, some customers were still experiencing problems accessing their funds and making payments (though the bank said ATMs were working as normal). One family even became homeless as the glitch derailed a house sale.