Nationwide online banking down: Problems affect millions of customers

Building society customers trying to log onto accounts said they had 'disappeared'

Nationwide Building Society: Different from the banks? (PA)

Millions of Nationwide customers were unable to access their accounts online this morning. Internet banking and mobile banking as well as mobile payments were out of order on Monday. Problems seem to have been caused after a planned upgrade on Sunday.

Nationwide’s banking customers took to Twitter on Monday morning to report that their current accounts have "vanished" and they had been unable to log on to online banking.

Kate Meighan of Manchester told The Independent she had been unable to access her account since Friday. "It was down over the weekend for 'maintenance' so haven't been able to check since Friday," she said. "I'm used to bad customer service in branch but their online service is usually spot on."

Nationwide said it was aware of the issue and teams were investigating the problem as a “high priority”.

The building society said that the problems had only affected online banking and card payments and cash withdrawals should not have been hit. It told worried customers "visa payments and cash withdrawals are unaffected."

On its website, it told customers: "We're sorry to have to tell you that your Online Bank is unavailable. We are making every effort to restore service as quickly as possible."

The outage came just a few hours after Nationwide tweeted that planned maintenance on online banking services had been "successfully completed" and customers could once again access their accounts. Sadly that proved to be a little premature.

However some cheeky tweeters asked the building society whether the apparent disappearance of their account online meant they didn’t need to repay their overdraft or mortgage.

At 9.15am the Nationwide claimed the meltdown was over. It told customers: "The issue with online and mobile banking has now been resolved."

A spokeswoman told The Independent: "We are aware of an issue that meant some customers were unable to access the Internet and Mobile Banks for a short period this morning. We have resolved the issue and apologise for any inconvenience caused. Throughout this period, customers could and still can use their cards to pay for goods and access funds at ATMs.