Nationwide overdraft customers set for £900,000 in refunds

Around 70,000 Nationwide customers are set to receive a slice of a £900,000 payout, the Competition and Markets Authority has revealed.

Nationwide’s Sara Bennison said: “While these members haven’t been overcharged, we appreciate these texts are designed to help people avoid unarranged overdraft charges, so we apologise that on this occasion we didn’t meet the high standards we set ourselves.

“We are contacting impacted members and will be automatically refunding the charges back into their account.”

The move comes after the CMA found Britain’s biggest building society had failed to warn customers they sent text messages to that they faced being slapped with fees if they dipped into their unarranged overdraft.

This marks the second time in six months that Nationwide has been forced to dish out cash to customers for failing to abide by the warning text message rule. Under the rule, which came into force in 2018, current account customers are meant to receive a text alert that they are about to be charged for entering into an unarranged overdraft.

The rule was introduced to give people ‘time to take action and avoid unexpected fees’, the CMA said.