RBS and Natwest payments disappear

Royal Bank of Scotland has confirmed that some of its customers are experiencing technical difficulties with their bank accounts, with as many as 600,000 transactions disappearing across RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank.

On the morning of 17th June, Natwest Bank used its helpline twitter account to confirm that ‘‘Some Customer payments are missing this morning – we are investigating this issue as a matter of urgency.’’

Natwest then tweeted: ‘‘we are looking into fixing this ASAP and funds will show as normal once the system is back to normal.’’

The majority of payments that have gone missing are Tax credits, with HMRC receiving an overwhelming number of complaints.

A spokesman for the bank said:

‘‘We are aware of an issue with our overnight process which has resulted in some of our customers not having credits or Direct Debits being applied to their accounts. We are working to get this resolved as quickly as possible and apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused.’’

This is not the first time that RBS has experienced difficulties within its I.T. infrastructure. In 2014, RBS were fined £56 million for IT failures in 2012 that led to a complete breakdown in its payment processes.

Natwest tweet

RBS recently addressed its I.T. problems in its annual report:

‘‘The vulnerabilities of the Group’s IT systems are due to the complexity of the Group’s IT infrastructure attributable in part to overlapping multiple legacy systems resulting from the Group’s acquisitions and the consequential gaps in how the IT systems operate, and insufficient-investments in IT infrastructure in the past.’’

Natwest is also no stranger to payment problems. In March, a NatWest customer from Barnsley found an unexpected £1m in his savings due to a technical error.

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