RBS expands mobile app with new payment features

The app is used by 860,000 RBS customers who will now access a new-look platform which the lender says has been “extensively redesigned”.

Customers will now be able to setup a new payee and pay up to £250 – without the need for a card reader, making it faster, easier and more convenient to pay someone new.

They will also now be able to create and cancel Standing Orders whilst stopping Direct Debits.

And the bank has collaborated with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to create 160 visual and audio modifications.

The changes will mean that tasks that had been extremely difficult or altogether impossible for blind and partially sighted people to complete; such as viewing transactions, transferring money between accounts and making payments, will now become far easier.

On average, 383,000 RBS customers login in to its mobile banking facility every day, with 44,000 payments typically made in a 24 hour period.

Martin Wise, director of digital banking for Royal Bank of Scotland, said: “I’m delighted that we’ve been able to introduce a whole new raft of features to our app and I’m particularly proud of the fact that we’ve made major changes to the design to make it far easier for our blind and partially sighted customers to use.

“Our customers now do more of their banking on their mobile phone, than on their computer, so we’re making sure that customers can manage their finances more easily through our app and we’ll be working hard to make even more improvements to it in the months to come.”

Steve Tyler, head of solutions, Strategy and Planning at RNIB said: “This new Royal Bank of Scotland app provides their customers with access to their bank account via a mobile. It’s a service that is available to all their customers, but has been tested to ensure that it is easy to use by blind and partially sighted people.

“The app offers lots of benefits including transferring money between accounts, making payments, fingerprint login and the “get cash” feature whereby the user is sent a code which is then inputted into an ATM in order to get cash out – what’s also great is that blind and partially sighted people have access to the same app as their sighted peers, at the same time.”

Other updates to the app include: