Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Natwest's mobile banking services have been hit by a glitch, causing users to experience issues accessing their accounts.
Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers also were unable to access their systems in a similar but unrelated incident. Telephone and online banking systems were both knocked out across the board.
The issues for Natwest, according to a spokesman, began at 8.30AM and continued throughout the day. At the time of writing, the glitch has yet to be fixed.
Natwest posted on Twitter: "We are aware that some customers are experiencing issues with mobile banking, we are working to get this resolved as quickly as possible. We apologise to customers for the inconvenience."
Some of Natwest's 24 million customers, however, were not happy with the downtime:
We can put men on the moon but #Natwest can't run an app! #UselessSimon Naylor (@Simon_Naylor) May 23, 2014
I know my money is safe with Natwest, if I can't access my account with the crashing App how can anyone steal it! #NatwestCameron Baker (@Cazman_Winning) May 23, 2014
#natwest app! 'Helpful banking' is kinda false advertising when I can't get on it and no info on how long it will be down! #badserviceKim Webster (@kimweb83) May 23, 2014
The RBS group has been affected by IT failures in the past, with the mobile banking app seeing up to 17.4 million log ins per week. In December 2013 RBS CEO Ross McEwan blamed "years of underinvestment" in IT for its flaws.
"We need to put our customers' needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time, but we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on," he said.
The company's worst blunder came in 2012 when millions of customers were locked out of their online banking accounts, costing RBS millions of pounds in compensation.
