Lloyds Banking Group has paid out compensation to the nearly 500,000 customers hit by a data breach as a result of an IT glitch.
The high street banking institution has distributed £139,000 in compensation to 3,625 customers following a significant data breach that occurred on March 12.
The incident affected up to 447,936 account holders across the banking giant's three main brands: Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland.
During the glitch, customers were able to view transactions belonging to other people, while some had their own financial information inadvertently shared with fellow app users.
A major bank has confirmed 500,000 customers due compensation after IT app 'defect'
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The payments were made to cover distress and inconvenience caused by the breach, though the bank confirmed that no customers have yet been identified as having suffered direct financial losses from the incident.
More than 114,000 customers actively clicked on transactions that did not belong to them when these became visible within the banking app.
By doing so, these users may have gained access to highly sensitive personal details belonging to other account holders.
The exposed information potentially included account numbers, payment references and national insurance numbers.
Lloyds customers saw their private information shared with other customers
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Has your banking app crashed? | GETTY The breach extended beyond the banking group's own customer base, with personal data belonging to individuals who do not hold accounts with Lloyds, Halifax or Bank of Scotland also becoming visible during the incident.
Jasjyot Singh, the consumer relations chief at Lloyds, issued a formal apology for the incident in correspondence sent to Parliament's Treasury Select Committee.
The letter to MPs outlined the full extent of the data exposure and its impact on customers. According to the banking group, the root cause was traced to a "software defect" that emerged following an overnight IT update.
This technical fault triggered the cascade of errors that allowed customer data to become visible to others using the mobile application.
Lloyds Bank apps have been hit by glitches in recent months | PAThe committee was informed that the breach's reach was broader than initially apparent, affecting people outside the Lloyds group's customer base.
Dame Meg Hillier, who chairs the Treasury Committee, reflected on the broader implications of the incident, saying: "Modern banking methods mean we can now perform a variety of tasks on our phones in a matter of seconds, and almost anywhere.
"What this incident brings into focus is the fact that there is a trade-off. By moving more interactions with our bank online, we place our faith in technology which can suffer unpredictable errors."
A Lloyds spokesman stated: "On March 12, some customers using our app may have briefly seen transactions that were not their own following an IT change. The issue was quickly identified and resolved, and we've contacted customers whose transactions may have been visible for that short time."