Natwest hit by cyber attack on payday

Yesterday Jon Snow tackled the RBS boss on technical problems, today hundreds were locked out of their accounts

NatWest and RBS have been hit by a cyber attack on payday as hundreds of customers complain that payments, including salaries, have been held up.

Customers inundated the Natwest customer service team on Twitter throughout the morning complaining about problems with payments and error messages saying that they were overdrawn.

RBS said the problem was caused due to a huge “surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the website” but has now been resolved.

Hundreds complained that they could not use NatWest’s site or its app, while others said they were not able to use their own credit cards.

Many Natwest account holders expressed their frustration that the problem had happened on payday leaving them unable to access their paycheck.

One customer who said she had gone overdrawn was advised by the bank “not to panic.”

Today is the last working day of the month and many salaries will be landing in account ahead of the weekend.

It is understood that the problem lasted 50 minutes and the bank is investigating the cause. The problem affected NatWest, RBS and Ulster brands.

An RBS spokesperson said: “The issues that some customers experienced accessing online banking this morning was due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the website This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

“At no time was there any risk to customers. Customers experienced issues for around 50 minutes and this has now been resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.”