NatWest apologises for another banking outage, says services now back up and running

The technical glitch left thousands of customers unable to use digital services of the bank

NatWest said on Wednesday that its internet and mobile banking services had resumed following an outage that lasted for nearly three hours.

"Our Online Banking, Mobile App and Telephony service are now back up and running," the company said on Twitter.

"Sorry for any problems this caused you and thanks for your patience while we fixed it," the statement added.

The bank, however, did not provide any details of the cause or the number of users impacted by the outage.

On Wednesday, online banking services of NatWest went down, leaving a large number of customers unable to use digital services of the bank.

The issues were reported just after 7.30pm, as many users took to social media to complain that their banking app was having technical issues and that they were unable to get cash out. Other said that they were unable to log in to the banking service or view their accounts with the bank. A large number of customers complained that they unable to pay for fuels at petrol pumps.

"All NatWest systems seem to be down, including their mobile app, online banking, phones, and debit card payments... People can't even pay their train tickets to get home... Whatever happened, seems quite serious," a user said on Twitter.

The digital services of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) were also affected during the outage.

DownDetector service showed that over 2,600 people had issues with NatWest's service at the peak of the outage.

NatWest acknowledged the issues and said that it was working to address the problems. The issue was eventually fixed at around 10:30 pm.

The outage reported on Wednesday is one of the latest glitches to impact NatWest's infrastructure.

In November last year, thousands of NatWest and RBS customers were unable to access payday cash during the Black Friday sales due to technical glitches in bank's online services.

Earlier in August 2019, customers of RBS and NatWest faced two days of downtime, preventing them from transferring or withdrawing money from their accounts.

In 2016, payment problems led to an afternoon of frustration for customers of NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank.

In its 2018 annual report, RBS said that it was "investing in innovation, with £1 billion committed to invest in 2019 aimed at improving legacy systems and delivering better solutions for customers."