A catastrophic global IT meltdown has wreaked havoc worldwide, with airlines forced to delay flights, retailers struggling to process card payments, and numerous customers left unable to complete their grocery shopping.

       At the epicentre of one of the most extensive IT failures the globe has ever seen is Microsoft's Windows services, following a botched software update from cybersecurity titan Crowdstrike.

       Financial institutions are feeling the pinch as well, with reports surfacing of customers facing card rejections at checkouts and stumbling blocks in executing money transfers.

       The full extent of the banking turmoil remains murky, but Monzo, Santander, and Metro Bank have all acknowledged experiencing technical difficulties, reports the Mirror.

       Santander took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, advising: "We are hearing that card payments may be affected. We suggest trying again in a short while and checking news bulletins for updates in the meantime."

       Metro Bank has also alerted customers to disruptions on its phone lines and advised them to pivot to online banking or their mobile app for urgent transactions, citing the global IT catastrophe as the culprit for some unavailable payment services.

       Monzo has been actively directing affected patrons to use the live chat feature within its app for assistance but have said all their systems are working as normal. In a statement they said: "Monzo isn’t directly impacted by the global Crowdstrike and Microsoft IT outage and our services are working as normal. You can make payments and do your day-to-day banking as usual.

       "The outage is impacting some of our third party suppliers, meaning submitting cheques in-app, crediting in-app cheque payments and viewing credit insights aren’t available right now. They'll be back up and running once the outage is fixed."

       However, Barclays customers can breathe a sigh of relief as the bank has confirmed that its systems are running smoothly at present.

       In response to a customer enquiry on X, Barclays reassured: "We're not experiencing any known issues about payments at the moment so you should be absolutely fine but you can keep an eye on our service status page here: https://status.uk.barclays. Any questions let me know."

       Natwest also echoed this sentiment, stating: "We are aware of this issue, but doesn't look to be directly affecting us at the moment but we will continue to monitor this."

       Nationwide has similarly reported no disruptions, affirming: "we are currently not seeing any customer impacts related to the global IT outage, but we will continue to monitor all systems closely, as we always do."