LONDON (Reuters) -British banks Lloyds and Barclays on Monday apologised to customers who suffered service outages over the past 48 hours, the latest in a string of such disruptions in recent years as lenders push their customers to bank online.

Barclays customers are experiencing intermittent errors with payments and transfers for a second day after serious IT problems that also affected the bank's app and online banking. Customers have told the BBC they are unable to make essential transactions, ranging from buying baby milk to completing a house move.

Barclays has issued an apology to its customers following technical issues that disrupted services and payments over the weekend. The bank has confirmed the outage has been rectified and that any payments delayed due to the IT problem in recent days have now been processed.

Barclays customers have been left stranded abroad and say they have even unable to buy food for newborn babies as a major IT outage entered its second day.

UK regulators are in close contact with Barclays Plc after a IT problem left thousands of customers locked out of their accounts for several days, according to people familiar with the matter.

Barclays previously stated affected customers were viewing outdated balances and payments were not being displayed. A Barclays spokesperson said after services returned to normal