Nationwide outages: history, compensation and how to check if Nationwide is down

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee of 18 reportable incidents between January 2023 and January 2025, 70 hours 26 minutes in all. The longest was on 22 March 2024, when payments in and out were disrupted for 13 hours 37 minutes and 457,000 transactions were affected. On payday, 28 February 2025, up to 196,255 customers may have had payment delays, and Nationwide paid £84,341 in compensation.

Is Nationwide down right now?

This page is a record, not a live monitor, so it cannot tell you whether Nationwide is working this minute. Nationwide's own service status page is the place to check. Nationwide shows the status of its services and planned maintenance on its service status page. The page says to contact it on X for more on maintenance; its account is @AskNationwide.

During an outage your money stays in your account: outages stop you reaching it or paying with it, they do not remove it. The Financial Ombudsman Service lists scams that exploit outages among the complaints it sees, so be wary of calls or messages offering help during one.

Major Nationwide outages

9 September 2025: App and internet bank outage

On Tuesday 9 September 2025 Nationwide's banking app and internet bank were offline from about 3pm until about 4pm. Cards, cash machines, direct debits, standing orders and incoming payments kept working. Nationwide posted on X: "Sorry, both our Banking app and Internet Bank are unavailable". It called the problem "a technical issue" and gave no further cause.

28 February 2025: Payday payment delays

On Friday 28 February 2025, a payday, Nationwide had problems from just after 7am for just over an hour, and again from shortly after 10am for under an hour. The app and internet bank stayed available, but Faster Payments in and out were delayed. Card payments ran on Visa's stand-in service from 9:45am to 1:12pm, and 8% of cash machine and card-terminal transactions were declined. Payment queues were cleared by 12:03pm. Nationwide told the Treasury Committee the cause was "high load and a process within one of our systems that logs transaction data that was running incorrectly", which used up capacity on its core banking platform. It said this was not linked to other providers' incidents that day. Up to 196,255 customers may have had payment delays, about 9,000 of them vulnerable, and 1,525 complained. Nationwide paid £84,341 in compensation.

23 August 2024: Faster Payments failure

From 5:09am on Friday 23 August 2024 Faster Payments into and out of Nationwide accounts were not reaching accounts for 5 hours 8 minutes. Nationwide told the Treasury Committee the cause was an "NBS technical change" and that 295,000 payment transactions were affected.

28 June 2024: Payday payment problems

Nationwide, HSBC, Barclays and Virgin Money customers had payment problems on payday, Friday 28 June 2024. Pay.UK said "a small number of Faster Payments were delayed or not processed". Nationwide apologised.

22 March 2024: Overnight change over-ran

From 2:17am on Friday 22 March 2024 Nationwide's Faster Payments, CHAPS, SWIFT and SEPA payments in and out were disrupted for 13 hours 37 minutes, and branches were affected. It was the longest incident in the figures Nationwide gave the Treasury Committee for January 2023 to January 2025. Nationwide gave the cause as an "NBS technical change" and said 457,000 payment transactions were affected.

21 December 2023: Pre-Christmas payment faults

Nationwide had three payment faults before and after Christmas 2023. On 21 December, from 4:37pm, outbound Faster Payments failed for 2 hours 47 minutes, affecting 184,400 transactions. On 22 December, transfers between accounts failed for 54 minutes, affecting 132,500 transactions. On 26 December, they failed again for 2 hours 14 minutes, affecting 140,500 transactions. Nationwide put them down to technical faults in its infrastructure or applications.

28 February 2022: Faster Payments delays

On Monday 28 February 2022 Faster Payments into and out of Nationwide accounts were delayed and queued. Nationwide blamed "a technical issue" and said "all associated Nationwide fees and charges will be refunded".

4 January 2022: New Year payment queue

On 4 January 2022, the first working day of the year, incoming Faster Payments to Nationwide accounts were queued. Nationwide put this down to "extremely high volumes" and said it was unconnected to the faults in December 2021.

31 December 2021: Overnight payment delay

Overnight into Friday 31 December 2021 incoming payments to Nationwide accounts, including wages, scheduled credits, standing orders and direct debits, were delayed. Nationwide described it as "a delay in processing overnight payments". It was resolved that morning.

21 December 2021: Pre-Christmas payment delays

Just before Christmas, on 21 December 2021, Faster Payments into and out of Nationwide accounts were delayed. Nationwide said it would "refund all Nationwide charges and fees incurred", and would refund other charges related to the problem if customers contacted it.

Incidents Nationwide reported to the FCA

Since August 2018 every bank or brand with at least 70,000 personal current accounts, or 15,000 business current accounts, must publish each quarter how many major operational or security incidents it reported to the FCA: the total, and how many hit telephone, mobile and internet banking, for the latest quarter and the latest 12 months.

What Nationwide told Parliament

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee of 18 incidents reportable under regulation 99 of the Payment Services Regulations between 1 January 2023 and 31 January 2025, totalling 70 hours 26 minutes, about 2.9 days. There were 7 incidents and 1,577 minutes in 2023, 11 incidents and 2,649 minutes in 2024, and none in January 2025.

Nationwide said it did not record how many customers each incident affected. The incidents affected 1.99 million payment transactions, about 0.03% of the about 4 billion payments it handles a year.

On 8 April 2025 the Treasury Committee Chair wrote to Nationwide about the IT failures of Friday 28 February 2025.

In its reply of 29 April 2025, Nationwide said 196,255 customers, 2.53% of its active current-account customers, may have had payment delays on 28 February 2025. It received 1,525 complaints.

The Treasury Committee said nine of the UK's top banks and building societies, Nationwide among them, had at least 803 hours of unplanned outages, more than 33 days, from at least 158 IT failure incidents between January 2023 and February 2025.

Has Nationwide paid compensation for outages?

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee it paid £77,452 in compensation for its incidents between January 2023 and January 2025, "refunding any charges incurred/loss or distress and inconvenience".

For 28 February 2025 Nationwide said: "Nationwide has paid out £84,341 in compensation to customers with all cases now resolved". On 27 March 2025 it made proactive refunds to under-18s and vulnerable customers who were pushed into overdraft by stand-in card processing.

The BBC reported that Nationwide's £84,341 was the largest payout by any bank for the 28 February 2025 outages.

Nationwide paid £60 each to about 20,000 customers whose direct debits failed on 4 January 2022. The payment covered that day only, not the December 2021 incidents.

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee that during incidents it uses "notify me" texts, an emergency cash process, Visa stand-in for card payments, 24/7 chat, and website and app banners, and that queued payments are processed without customers having to send them again.

Has Nationwide been fined for IT failures?

We found no FCA or PRA fine against Nationwide Building Society for an IT or operational-resilience failure.

In December 2025 the FCA fined Nationwide £44 million for ineffective financial-crime systems and controls between 2016 and 2021. This fine was not about an outage.

Your rights if an outage costs you money

No law sets a fixed amount of compensation for a bank outage. What you are owed depends on what it cost you, and banks decide most cases themselves.

If a payment you made fails or goes wrong, your bank must refund it without undue delay and put your account back as it would have been, and it is liable for any charges and interest you have to pay as a result. It is not liable if the failure was caused by abnormal and unforeseeable circumstances beyond its control that could not have been avoided.

The Financial Ombudsman Service says that when it upholds an outage complaint it can tell the bank to refund extra costs caused by the outage, such as overdraft or late-payment charges, and to pay for distress and inconvenience. In one case it published, a bank offered £25 after a multi-day outage and the Ombudsman told it to pay a further £75.

Complain to the bank first. For a complaint about a payment it must reply in full within 15 business days, or 35 in exceptional cases; for other complaints within eight weeks. You then have six months from its final response to take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge.

Frequently asked questions

Is Nationwide down today?

This page records past outages and cannot show Nationwide's status this minute. Nationwide publishes live status at https://www.nationwide.co.uk/ways-to-bank/service-status. Nationwide shows the status of its services and planned maintenance on its service status page. The page says to contact it on X for more on maintenance; its account is @AskNationwide.

How often does Nationwide have outages?

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee of 18 reportable incidents between January 2023 and January 2025, 70 hours 26 minutes in all. The longest was on 22 March 2024, when payments in and out were disrupted for 13 hours 37 minutes and 457,000 transactions were affected. On payday, 28 February 2025, up to 196,255 customers may have had payment delays, and Nationwide paid £84,341 in compensation. In its latest published figures Nationwide reported 3 major operational or security incidents to the FCA in the 12 months to 30 June 2026.

When was the last big Nationwide outage?

9 September 2025: On Tuesday 9 September 2025 Nationwide's banking app and internet bank were offline from about 3pm until about 4pm. Cards, cash machines, direct debits, standing orders and incoming payments kept working. Nationwide posted on X: "Sorry, both our Banking app and Internet Bank are unavailable". It called the problem "a technical issue" and gave no further cause.

Will Nationwide compensate me for an outage?

Nationwide told the Treasury Committee it paid £77,452 in compensation for its incidents between January 2023 and January 2025, "refunding any charges incurred/loss or distress and inconvenience". If a payment failed or went wrong, your bank must refund it and is liable for the charges and interest that result. Beyond that there is no fixed amount: complain to the bank, and if you are unhappy with its answer the Financial Ombudsman Service can order it to refund costs and pay for distress and inconvenience.

How do I complain about a Nationwide outage?

Complain to the bank first and keep evidence of any costs, such as late-payment or overdraft charges. It has 15 business days to answer a complaint about a payment and eight weeks for others. You then have six months to take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free.

More: Nationwide's credit rating and safety record, outage figures for every UK bank, and outage histories for Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Chase UK, first direct, Halifax, HSBC UK, Lloyds Bank, Metro Bank.