NatWest recovers from cash machine outage

NatWest has recovered following problems with its cash machines and online and telephone banking services on Saturday.

Millions of customers were unable to withdraw cash from ATMs or use the online and phone banking services during the day.

Although cash machines were again operational by late Saturday morning, the online and phone systems took slightly longer, not becoming available until the evening.

Customers wanting money could still use retail cash-back facilities during the outage.

A spokeswoman from Royal Bank of Scotland, owner of NatWest, said: "We absolutely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers."

silicon.com Financial Services

Get the latest financial services news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the FS newsletter today!

She added: "We had some technical problems which have now been resolved."

Although she wouldn't go into detail about what caused the outage, the spokeswoman said it was an "extremely rare occurrence".

NatWest has 7.5 million personal banking customers and 850,000 small business accounts.