RBS says 600,000 payment transactions hit by IT problem

[LONDON] Royal Bank of Scotland said 600,000 customer transactions had not been processed after another technology problem at the state-backed bank.

RBS said the cause of the problem had been identified and it was working to resolve missed wages, benefit payments, bill payments and other credit or direct debit payments for customers in Britain and Ireland. It affected all its RBS, NatWest, Coutt's and Ulster Bank brands.

RBS has been hit by a number of technical problems in recent years and last year was fined 56 million pounds by Britain's regulator for a system breakdown in 2012 that left 6.5 million customers unable to make or receive payments for days. That was caused by a botched software upgrade.

RBS said to prevent a recurrence of the problems, it would invest an extra 750 million pounds by the end of 2015 to enhance the security and resilience of its IT systems.

"We are aware of an issue with our overnight process which has resulted in some of our customers not having credits or Direct Debits being applied to their accounts. We are working to get this resolved as quickly as possible and apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused," an RBS spokesman said on Wednesday.

"We will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result of this issue."

There were angry comments from customers on Twitter. "No payments into account yesterday or today!!! When will they go in?" one customer complained.

REUTERS