RBS hit by mobile banking app glitch

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)'s mobile banking application was down Friday morning in another IT failure following a major glitch last year.

Around two million customers at the 81% state-owned lender, who use the app on their smartphones and tablet computers, were unable to access their accounts, the Financial Times reported.

Last summer the bank's system froze following a software upgrade which stopped payments in and out of the accounts of millions of its clients. The hiccup cost the bank £175m.

The latest IT setback comes as RBS works to return to the private sector following a tax-payer bailout in 2008 at the brink of its collapse.

A Which? spokesperson told the newspaper: "Consumers increasingly use mobile banking services to access their accounts and will want to be assured that their money is accessible and safe at all times. These frequent glitches continue to raise questions about how robust and reliable banks' IT systems are."

RD