RBS: No quick fix for Ulster Bank customers

The fallout from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group's recent technical woes will continue to blight Ulster Bank customers until the start of the next week, it has confirmed.

Over the past week, users of the banking group's RBS, Natwest and Ulster Bank services have been left out of pocket because of a software glitch that meant payments into their accounts failed to register.

In a statement released earlier today, the beleaguered banking group said RBS and Natwest customers should have seen their balances update overnight.

Despite this, many Natwest and RBS customers were still reporting problems in the comments section on the company's website this afternoon.

Meanwhile, the technical difficulties look set to blight Ulster Bank customers for a little while longer, RBS confirmed.

"The full focus of our efforts will now be on delivering the same result for our Ulster Bank customers, who continue to experience unacceptable delays to their accounts being updated," said the company in a statement.

"We are confident that this will help us restore a full service for the start of next week and remain grateful for our customers' patience."

RBS has already promised to waive overdraft fees and contact credit agencies to mitigate the effect its problems could have on customer credit scores.

Randy Clark, chief marketing officer at web services specialist UC4 Software, said the group's technical difficulties could prove costly for the firm.

"The true cost of these outages will include extended opening hours for Saturday and Sunday, the financial ombudsman and, no doubt, customer compensation," he said.