My mobile banking’s down. What should I do?

Two of the NatWest Group's banks – NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland – went down on Friday (30 August), leaving many people struggling to transfer money.

NatWest has apologised for the errors and confirmed they’ve now been resolved.

But mobile banking errors like these can cause a lot of stress if you can’t manage your money or make important payments.

Here’s what to do when your banking app fails you.

Complain to the bank

Make sure you’ve got evidence of your problems (such as bank statements or any messages) so you can make a formal complaint to your bank.

You’ll probably be able to get your money back if you’ve been charged because of service issues, e.g. if you’ve been charged a fee for a missed payment that didn’t go through due to the outage.

Missed payment fees can also affect your credit rating, so you should also keep a record of this.

If you speak to someone to try and sort the problem, make a note of:

• their name
• when you spoke to them
• what you discussed
• what they told you to do

Complaining to the financial ombudsman service

If you’re unhappy with how the bank has handled things, you can contact the free financial ombudsman service (FOS).

Banks don’t have to pay compensation if their service has dropped, but you can sometimes claim your money back.

You might be compensated after taking your complaint to the FOS, but that’s not a guarantee, as it’ll depend on your circumstances. They’ll need to decide if you lost out as a result of the outage.

If they think you did, they can tell the bank to reimburse you for any fees, charges or fines you received as a result, such as missing a credit card payment.

The FOS can also tell the bank to pay you for any money you didn’t get, such as if you were unable to pay money in.

If your credit score was affected, the FOS might tell the bank to correct it.

On top of this, they might be able to tell your bank to:

• reimburse you for any extra costs, such as phone calls or travelling to your local branch
• make a payment for any inconvenience caused