Natwest online payments go down

I got BILLS I gotta pay...

Customers at Blighty's high-street bank Natwest have been struggling to make online payments this afternoon.

One customer got in touch to report that a NatWest web-chat support person today told them: "We are currently experiencing issues with online banking, particularly making payments to new and existing payees on your online banking - we're working fast to fix this..."

Other folk took to Twitter to complain:

Anyone banking with NatWest today - they are having massive issues with their online banking

— Danielle Slatter (@mouseslatter) September 28, 2016

@NatWest_Help Need to send money ASAP via online banking but it's coming up as "temporarily unavailable". Any way I can get around this?

— Will Fuller (@will_fuller) September 28, 2016

@NatWest_Help Do your current online banking problems include making payments? Trying to transfer and get a service unavailable message Thx

— Gavin P (@gavin3919) September 28, 2016

Natwest isn't exactly a stranger to online outages.

However, the most notorious incident was in 2012, when an RBS and NatWest outage affected at least 6.5 million customers in the UK and lasted for weeks. The Register exclusively revealed how the ballsup happened here.

In 2014 the banks were slapped with a £56m fine by regulators, who warned that the disaster could have threatened the stability of the entire financial system.

The Register has contacted Natwest for a comment. ®