Barclays has said its payment systems and banking app are fully operational after earlier glitches which began on Tuesday evening.

The bank apologised for issues with payments into and out of the accounts of some of its UK customers.

In an update at 03:25 GMT, it said customers could make and receive payments once more.

Other firms such as Sainsbury's and McDonald's were recently hit by technical issues.

Dozens of account holders spoke earlier of problems logging onto the Barclays app as well as the bank's online banking service.

One business customer voiced their concern on social media, saying the issue was "not a joke or glitch; this is people's lives". "We need to make emergency plans if our money is inaccessible or gone," they added.

Responding to customers via its social media pages, the bank apologised and said it was aware of issues affecting some users logging into the app, with online banking and payments. 

Barclays has about 20 million customers in the UK and has previously said it handles more than 50 million payments each month.

DownDetector, a website which monitors IT issues with companies, noted outages being reported with the bank from about 21:15 on Tuesday.

Barclays is the latest company to be affected by technical issues in recent days. 

Last weekend, supermarket Sainsbury's was forced to cancel deliveries to customers after an IT problem and could only take cash in its supermarkets. Tesco was also affected by similar technical issues. 

Earlier in the month fast food chain McDonald's had to close many of its restaurants after it suffered IT outages in stores around the world, it blamed the problems on a third-party provider.