Customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest, Tesco Bank and Nationwide Building Society were unable to view their credit card information on their mobile apps or online, or access the information using telephone banking.

The affected banks took to social media site Twitter to explain to customers what was happening.

RBS Tweeted: “There is an intermittent issue with credit card information not showing on our mobile app and digital banking. We are working hard to fix this. Thank you for your patience and apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

Tesco Bank Tweeted: “Credit card customers: we currently have an issue impacting our mobile app, online banking and telephony services which our team are working hard to fix, we are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.”

TSYS provides payment, processing, merchant, and related payment services to various institutions,  including banks, worldwide.

A spokesperson for TSYS said: “A hardware-related issue which impacted the service we provide some of our European clients has been resolved. We are continuing to monitor our systems and are working closely with our clients to ensure everything is functioning properly.”

IT outages at banks and other financial services firms are becoming more common as banks digitise their operations and outsource various functions to third party providers.

Most glitches don’t last long and result in minimal disruption to customers. However, major issues such as those suffered by TSB last year, can result in ongoing disruption to customers.