600K Delayed Payments Later: How RBS Recovered From Latest Computer Glitch

The Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed that the 600,000 credit and debit transactions that were held up early last week due to a payments failure have now been processed correctly, Bloomberg reported late last week.

“The issues customers were experiencing in relation to delayed credits and debits have now been resolved, and accounts have been updated,” the government-owned bank said in a statement Friday (June 19). “We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience and distress that this has caused our customers.”

“If any customers are still experiencing issues, please contact our call centers or come into a branch where our staff are ready to help,” the bank added. “We will continue our work to make sure that no customer will be left out of pocket as a result of this issue.”

But this is not the first time RBS has landed itself in hot water with both customers and regulators.

The bank reported the hundreds of thousands of transfers went missing due to a computer system failure, which closely resembled the cause of its other major IT meltdown in 2012. Just last year the bank was fined $87 million for the earlier fiasco, which locked millions of customers out of accounts and knocked out payments processing systems.

Shortly after being slapped with that fine, the bank experienced yet another glitch leaving many customers’ credit and debit cards totally disabled.

“RBS and other banks have told us that they are now ‘investing heavily’ in systems on which their customers will be able to rely. Events will tell us whether they have done enough,” warned Andrew Tyrie MP, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, back in 2014.

This latest failure may shine light on the fact that RBS still has work to do.

RBS Group’s Chief Administrative Officer Simon McNamara claimed the bank is spending ₤150 million each year to build up new technology and strengthen its computer systems, Bloomberg reported.

But heavy investments may not be such a quick fix, as McNamara also confirmed the technology is “complex, and it will fail.”

Now that the issues affecting customers seem to be resolved, regulators will undertake a review of the latest failure.

David McIlroy, a barrister at Forum Chambers, told The Financial Times: “It is scandalous that a government-owned institution has found itself in this mess again. It’s not like a small bank which has teething problems; it’s a major part of the U.K.’s banking infrastructure.”

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