Thousands of NatWest customers have been impacted by outages across the bank's mobile app and online banking services.

At its peak on Tuesday morning, over 3,700 problem reports were submitted by NatWest customers to real-time outage monitoring site Downdetector. Thousands more also complained about issues throughout the morning.

The issues started at approximately 5.40am, with NatWest saying it had resolved the problem by 9.30am.

The bank said that the outages only impacted some of its customers across retail and business banking.

Disgruntled customers took to social media to complain about the glitch, including one who said that he couldn't follow advice to visit a local branch because NatWest had shut down all the banks closest to them.

According to Which? NatWest Group, which comprises NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, has closed 1,360 branches over the past nine years.

Another customer complaining about the outage said that they were extremely frustrated after trying to log in to their online banking for hours.

A NatWest spokesperson told FStech: "We are aware that some customers were experiencing difficulties accessing NatWest mobile and online banking this morning. The issue has been resolved and customers are now able to log in as normal. We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused."

NatWest's help account @NatWest_Help on X, formerly Twitter, did not provide an update to customers on the social media platform on Tuesday morning. The bank also did not share why the issue has occurred.

In February, Santander customers also took to social media after experiencing issues with cash transfers and payments from their online banking accounts.

At the time, the bank was able to share that there had been a “technical issue” which triggered delays to faster payments.

Last year, HSBC also faced issues with its mobile banking app.

The outages come after NatWest announced last month that profits had declined from £107 million in the last quarter of 2023 to £82 million in the first three months of the year.

Total income was also down by £97 million to £327 million compared to £424 million recorded in the previous quarter.

The bank blamed lower income on a profit share arrangement with NatWest Group subsidiaries whereby the full-year 2023 amount of £177 million was recognised in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with £45 million in the current quarter.

Last week, Reuters reported that Britain is poised to abandon a landmark sale of shares in NatWest Group to the general public.

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