NatWest has apologised to millions of customers locked out of its app in the latest IT outage to hit a major UK bank.
The high street bank said it was investigating a problem caused by an update to the app that was rolled out late on Thursday, leaving customers unable to access their accounts through the app since shortly after 9am on Friday.
It will be disruptive to the more than 10 million customers who use the NatWest banking app to access their account every day.
The lender said its other services – including card payments, in-branch, online and telephone banking – were operating as normal.
A NatWest spokesperson said: “We are aware that customers are experiencing difficulties accessing the NatWest mobile banking app. We’re really sorry about this and working to fix it as quickly as possible. Customers can still use online and telephone banking, or visit a branch.”
The app outage comes at a time when NatWest, like most high street banks, is pushing more customers to its online app while shutting branches.
NatWest is due to close 53 more branches throughout 2025, leaving it with 431. The bank said last month that more than 80% of its active current account customers were doing their banking online, while 97% of new accounts were opened digitally.
While the outage was not linked to a cyber-attack, heightened attention is being paid to banks’ resilience after a spate of attacks that have disrupted retailers including Harrods, Co-op and Marks & Spencer.
Banks’ IT systems have come under increased scrutiny in recent months, with customers at Britain’s largest banks and building societies suffering the equivalent of more than one month of IT failures between January 2023 and February 2025.
Those figures did not include the full impact of an outage at Barclays that started at the end of January and affected 56% of online payments during the crucial payday period for many employees. It expects to pay a total of between £5m and £7.5m in compensation to customers for “inconvenience or distress”. There has since been further disruption at Barclays.
NatWest racked up the most time lost to outages over that period, amounting to 194 hours, through 13 incidents, for which it paid out £348,000. HSBC paid out £232,697 to its customers after 32 incidents led to 176 hours of disruption.
Commenting on the latest outage, the Which? Money editor, Jenny Ross, said: “Banks are encouraging more and more of us to rely on apps to do our essential banking, so when these go down it can be devastating.
“In the worst cases there’s a risk that impacted NatWest customers may miss important bill payments, find themselves unable to pay for essential services or risk going overdrawn – issues which could come with knock-on effects like late payment or overdraft penalties, or affect their ability to get credit or borrow money.”
Ross said NatWest should keep customers updated and ensure that they are swiftly compensated where appropriate.
Last week, the UK government sold its final shares in NatWest Group, ending 17 years of state ownership since the £45bn taxpayer bailout that saved the bank – formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland – from collapse at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
