Benny Higgins the Tesco Bank Chief executive has announced that a systematic,sophisticated attack was behind 20,000 customer accounts having money taken from them over the weekend of the 5th November

At this point the exact nature of the attack has not been released. It seems that 40,000 accounts had suspicious transactions over the weekend with half having money taken. Tesco Bank have confirmed that all monies taken will be refunded by close of Tuesday 8th. Why it is taking so long is not clear. It is currently not known how much money was fraudulently taken from customers accounts.

Security consultants are saying this is the largest attack of this nature om an online bank.

At present tesco customers are only able to make cash withdrawals and payments via chip and pin with direct debits unaffected.

Tesco share price closed down 2.22%