More than half a million payments submitted to the RBS group failed to be processed after an IT glitch disrupted the company’s systems on Wednesday morning.
Customer payments numbering 600,000, including benefit payments such as tax credits and the disability living allowance, were not credited to the relevant accounts because of the problem, which the company says has since been fixed.
A spokesperson from RBS said: "We are aware of an issue which has resulted in a delay to payments and Direct Debits being applied to some customer accounts.
"We have fixed the underlying issue, we apologise for the inconvenience caused and we are working flat out to get these payments updated for our customers no later than Saturday."
Spokespeople from the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority, who between them regulate the financial sector in the UK, said they would work with RBS to address the problem.
In the wake of the disruption customers of the bank took to Twitter to complain about the problem after the company’s phone lines were apparently clogged up with requests for help.
RBS insisted that it would deal with any fines or penalties their customers incurred as a result of the payments being delayed.
"To any customers concerned about the implications of this issue, we advise them to get in touch with our call centres or come into a branch where our staff will be ready to help," the company said.
"We will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result of this issue."
Though RBS previously suffered an IT glitch in 2012 that left it with fines worth £56m from the financial regulators, CBR understands that the present issue is far narrower in scope.
Whilst the current problems appears to have been resolved in a matter of hours, the previous incident carried on for several weeks and affected some 6.5 million people.
