RBS chief executive Ross McEwan has said the bank feels customers’ pain after they found themselves locked out of online and mobile accounts.

Users started reporting issues in the early hours of Friday, saying they were unable to access the app or online banking services.

Mr McEwan suggested the problems may be related to technology changes, which are made on a regular basis.

The issues have affected NatWest, Ulster Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland customers.

The banking group has nearly eight million customers who use mobile and online banking.

RBS assured that users were still able to use telephone banking, branches and ATMs.

Mr McEwan told LBC: “We feel the pain for our customers every time this happens.

“We’re still working through what the issue is there…

“Absolute apologies to customers who are used to using mobile – and more and more are using mobile.”

Ross McEwan
Ross McEwan (Andrew Milligan/PA)

He said: “We make a lot of changes to our technology on an ongoing basis – it may be related to that but we just don’t know at this point.”

Asked about previous glitches, he said such incidents had “dropped dramatically”.

He said: “If you look back at 2014 we had something like 300 incidents, last year we only had 20, so we are certainly improving the organisation and how it operates for our customers.”

RBS confirmed that customers across the brands were affected by the outage, which started at around 5am.

In a statement, RBS said: “We are aware that customers are currently experiencing issues logging into their online and mobile banking accounts. We would like to apologise for the inconvenience.

“We are aware of the problem and are working to fix the issue. Customers can still use ATMs and telephone banking.”

NatWest banking problems
The screen that greeted NatWest customers (PA)

Customers hit out at the banks on Twitter, with one saying: “Natwest app down again. Not really acceptable for our 24 economy! How can we trust you with our money?”

Earlier this month, RBS announced plans to swing the axe on another 54 branches, 14 of which are the last bank in town – meaning there are no other bank or building society branches in those areas.

The latest glitch came a day after some Barclays customers were left struggling to log into accounts due to a technical problem. Barclays said it has since fixed the issue.

The banking problems follow TSB’s huge IT meltdown earlier this year, after a botched IT switch saw millions of customers locked out of accounts.