RBS Customers Hit By Online Payments Fault

RBS customers have been left short-changed following an IT failure which meant thousands of online payments failed to be completed.

As many as 600,000 transactions, including wages, tax credits and disability payments, were all delayed as customers from RBS, NatWest, Coutts and Ulster Bank were all affected.

The bank has confirmed the outage, saying that the affected payments should be completed by the weekend.

Not out of pocket

“We are aware of an issue which has resulted in a delay to payments and direct debits being applied to some customer accounts,” a spokesman for RBS said.

“We have fixed the underlying issue, we apologise for the inconvenience caused and we are working flat out to get these payments updated for our customers no later than Saturday.

“To any customers concerned about the implications of this issue, we advise them to come into a branch or get in touch with our call centres, where our staff will be ready to help. We will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result of this issue.”

The issue is not the first time RBS has been hit by a major IT issue. Back in 2012, the bank was fined £56m after a software upgrade caused a massive outage, leaving millions of customers unable to access their accounts.

Following this, RBS pledged to spend £750 million on IT upgrades by the end of 2015.

The bank’s mobile app also suffered a major outage in February 2014, leaving thousands of customers without access after a huge surge in traffic took the app offline.

Back in March 2013, NatWest also suffered an IT failure which meant users were unable to withdraw their own funds from cash machines. Payments from bank accounts were also refused, and online and telephone banking was also hit.

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