After a furiously fast investigation into the cause of HSBC’s transaction downtime on Bank Holiday Monday, they have announced that a “hardware problem” caused the disruptions that affected thousands of customers in the UK. The problem has been corrected.

The fault with HSBC’s transaction systems caused debit card failures (also affecting some credit card customers), denied ATM transactions on the spot and disrupted Internet banking facilities for both consumers and businesses.

An HSBC spokeswoman quickly added “The original problem had nothing to do with transaction volumes or new chip and PIN technology.”