I’ve been chatting with her a lot recently. No better than any pre-LLM chatbot at the moment, maybe GPT will make her a bit more able to respond without resorting to “choose from these options”.
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Opened a NatWest Reward account on Thursday, to try and finally dump Barclays, and must say it was a real smooth onboarding process.
All sorted within a few minutes. Account appeared in app/online banking the following day (reminiscent of Nationwide), Digital Saver opened yesterday and visible in app today. Test transfers/payments between NatWest and Monzo/Chase completed without fuss, and today (Saturday) the debit card arrives through the letterbox! (Google Pay was added yesterday or Thursday, cannot recall).
Roundups x5 switched on.
Let’s see how this goes 
Out of the legacy banks, NatWest is my favourite. Decent app, relatively decent products for my needs, local branch has a coin counting machine I’ve used a few times, when you call them you can prove it’s use using the app etc.
Only downsides I’ve personally found is their customer service is a bit meh, Cora is useless, they have some really old systems like not showing direct debits until first payment and requesting you tell them when you go abroad which you have to do separately in the app for both credit and debit cards. Their default atm limit is low (£250 for select, £300 for rewards) on the rare occasion I’ve had to withdraw cash.
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This is a strange one as doesn’t assist fraud prevention. Although I am aware of DD guarantee.
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I find them a solid legacy option. I used to use RBS but am now with NatWest. The experience is more or less the same bar one credit card not being offered with RBS. Good app and notifications, decent products. Chat and processing could be a bit more seamless.
I have had issues opening new current accounts with both banks, having to appeal them and then have it opened. I think it might be because I did the Drummond’s thing and then closed it.
I noticed I have different emails addresses for my NatWest and RBS profiles, could it be worth matching them up?
I didn’t used to bother. They (RBS) froze my card in Germany and I unblocked it by text. They later froze my credit card in Brazil and was told I should have told them haha.
I had to beg my mobile provider to give me some airtime credit as you could only unlock the card through a text message.
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Hello fellow club member. Same thing happened to my NatWest (although the SMS sender was “RoyBankScot”) card in Hong Kong. Paid 82p roaming charge to send a text to unlock it. What was annoying is I didn’t have my UK sim active at the time so I was getting the declined push notifications but didn’t see the SMS until I swapped esims. I suspect it’s probably low-priority for them but I hope they will integrate it into the app, off sms.
(The thing that caused it to be blocked [mobile octopus topup] was declined again after unblocking the card so I ended up using a HSBC card anyway 
)
I still haven’t bothered telling them for trips since and haven’t been blocked again (yet).
Okay, first possible hiccup.
Activated Round-Ups feature this morning x5
This afternoon, I used my debit card to the tune of £1.01
No round-ups have been applied at all, not even x1. They are confirmed on.
Do NatWest not process them the same as Chase, i.e. immediately, and maybe only when transaction settled, which is a tad annoying if so because available balance will then be incorrect until reconcilliation.
a-ha
Just thought of using AI and discovered
With NatWest Round Ups, spare change from debit card and contactless payments is rounded up to the nearest pound and transferred to your savings account when the payments clear, which can take up to 4 days
Not a feature I shall be using often then, unfortunately.
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Unless they have a specific exemption for this exact situation of the Rewards account being downgraded, it’s a case of close and re-open a fresh one unfortunately.
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Yup, NatWest do not have the ability to product transfer or switch your credit card. You’d need to close and reopen a new card.
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Yes, it’s much slower than Chase unfortunately.
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Round ups happen once the transaction settles which is usually 2-3 working days; then the working day after round ups happens.
It’s crap.
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I may or may not have remembered rightly but I think the credit card departments contact details are identical for NatWest and RBS. Somewhere in Southend. Presumably explains the text and how they are able to enforce the 3 card limit across the group despite the banking profiles being separate.
I’m going away somewhere far flung soon, so I will certainly be telling them.
I also have a few other FX free cards in case
I opened a new RBS card recently and the email I got asking for feedback was branded as NatWest, so seems the lines do get crossed quite a lot.
Yeah I think it’s more integrated than the current account/savings side given it’s not deposits to X bank
The investments will be similar
Did you already have another Natwest product / use their app? If not, do you have access to enrol to their biometric approval yet?
I had no other product with NatWest.
I do have access, but only use fingerprint atm.
It has prompted me to increase security to include face and voice.
The round ups are fine if you’re looking to just shift savings over but not if it’s part of your monthly budget. Too hard to track
This is the plan.
I just need to be careful how I do it.
I’ve started with £1.01 to my savings account.
Learned my lesson from my TSB experience though and not hammered that as don’t want my card blocked in first few days of the account
Even worse - it’s if you’ve ever received one. Unfortunately not just within x months etc.
You won’t be eligible to earn £150 if you’ve ever received cash from a NatWest, RBS, or Ulster Bank switch offer before.
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