RBS Review: Is the £200 Switch Worth It, and Is RBS Just NatWest?

The Royal Bank of Scotland plc is registered in Scotland (company SC083026), with its registered office at 36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh. It is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the FCA and the PRA, with Financial Services Register number 114724. It is part of NatWest Group, and its own pages often call it Royal Bank.

The difference that matters most is that RBS holds its own banking licence. Its FSCS information sheet protects eligible deposits up to £120,000 per person, a limit shared only with Drummonds, Holts and Child & Co. NatWest's limit is a separate £120,000, shared by NatWest, NatWest Premier, Ulster Bank, NatWest Boxed, First Active and Mettle. So savings split between RBS and NatWest sit under two limits, not one.

Two more differences are Scottish. If you live in Scotland, Scots law governs your account agreement; anywhere else it is English law, and either way you can take legal action in any UK court. And RBS banknotes, unlike Bank of England ones, have no end date for acceptance. You don't need to live in Scotland to open an account: any UK resident aged 18 or over can apply. Don't confuse RBS with Bank of Scotland, which is a different bank with its own switch offer and isn't mentioned in the RBS terms.

The switch offer covers two accounts. Select has no monthly fee and does the everyday basics: a contactless debit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, an arranged overdraft if you are approved, and an app with spending categories and a free credit score from TransUnion. RBS says it will refund money a fraudster takes from your account through Digital Banking or the app, as long as you kept your login details safe.

Reward costs £2 a month (£24 a year). It pays 2 Rewards a month for each of two Direct Debits taken from the account, 4 Rewards in all, which RBS values at £4 a month. Direct Debits under £2 don't count. Spending at partner retailers adds Rewards from 1%. Rewards stay pending for 35 days, can be exchanged once you have £5, and take 5 working days to arrive if you bank them as money; you can also take eGift codes or donate them. Card spending in a foreign currency has no fee.

Reward comes with a condition that is easy to miss: you must pay at least £1,250 in total every calendar month into your RBS personal current accounts, and it can't come from another current or savings account you hold with RBS. Miss it and RBS may convert the account to Select, ending the Rewards. You can hold only one Reward account in your name and one in joint names.

RBS's switch page advertises Reward as "up to £5 a month", adding £1 for a mobile app login. The Reward account page and the MyRewards Terms both say £4, so that is the figure we use. RBS also sells packaged accounts (Reward Silver at £12 a month, Reward Platinum at £23), but the offer asks you to open Select or Reward.

The May 2026 terms, still the ones linked from RBS's pages on 11 October 2026, set four steps. Be a UK resident. Open a Select or Reward account from 6 May 2026. Request and complete a full switch with the Current Account Switch Service (CASS), online or in the app, from a current account that isn't with RBS, NatWest or Ulster Bank; the switch has to close that account and move its payments across. Then, within 60 days of the switch completing, pay £1,250 into the new account and log in to the RBS mobile app on any device that supports it.

The £1,250 can be one payment or several, and each has to stay in the account for at least 24 hours to count. Money moved across by the switch counts too, so an old account holding £1,250 or more can cover it on switch day. On Reward, RBS confirms the £1,250 you pay in for the account's monthly condition also counts towards the offer, so you don't need £2,500. The 60 days run from completion, not from your application.

RBS pays the £200 within 30 calendar days of you finishing, as long as the account is still open and isn't a Student, Graduate, Foundation, Reward Black, Premier Select or Premier Reward account. Converting to another RBS current account is fine otherwise. No end date is published. RBS can change or withdraw the offer at any time, but if it does so after you have applied to switch, the terms say you are still entitled to the £200 as long as you meet the conditions.

Two practical points. A line on RBS's switch page says the offer is for people who "didn't hold a NatWest current account" on 6 May 2026; the terms PDF, and the rest of the page, say RBS, and the terms are what count. And there is no referral code: this is RBS's own public offer. Keep screenshots of the switch completion message, your pay-ins and your app login in case the payment doesn't arrive.

The tasks are light; the eligibility rules are not. You can't get the £200 if you have ever received cash from an RBS, NatWest or Ulster Bank switch offer, however long ago. It also won't be paid if anyone else on the account has. If you took NatWest's switch bonus, RBS's is closed to you, and the reverse applies too. If you aren't sure, RBS suggests asking Cora, its chatbot, to check.

You also need to have held no RBS current account on 6 May 2026. Former customers who had closed their RBS current account before that date can qualify, provided they have never had a group switch bonus. If you already held an RBS current account on 6 May 2026, you can still switch into it, but you won't get the £200.

The switch has to qualify as well. Moving from a NatWest or Ulster Bank account doesn't count. Nor does a partial switch, where your payments move but the old account stays open, nor an account at a bank outside CASS. Joint accounts can only switch to another joint account, with both holders agreeing. You get one bonus however many accounts you open.

On Select, the value is the £200, with nothing to set against it except the effort and the loss of your old account. That makes it a good use for a spare current account rather than the one your salary and bills run through, unless you were planning to move anyway.

On Reward, the first year comes to about £224: the £200 bonus plus £48 of Rewards, less £24 of fees. That assumes two Direct Debits of at least £2 every month and £1,250 paid in every month from outside RBS. After the first year it nets £24 a year before any partner Rewards. If your income doesn't already arrive at RBS, Reward is simply £2 a month for fee-free card spending abroad.

That travel perk is where Reward can earn its keep. Spend £1,000 by card in euros and Select charges £27.50 at 2.75%, more than a year of Reward's fee; Reward charges nothing. A Select holder can get much the same result with the app's Travel account, which converts at a rate RBS shows you when you top up.

Either account can also open the Digital Regular Saver, at 5.25% AER (5.13% gross) variable on up to £5,000. Paying in £150 on the first of each month for a year earns about £51 of interest on £1,800 saved, if the rate doesn't change.

Abroad. Select charges a 2.75% non-sterling transaction fee on card payments and cash withdrawals in foreign currencies. Reward drops the fee on card payments but keeps the 2.75% on cash. RBS converts card payments at the Visa or Mastercard scheme rate. The Travel account is the workaround: no RBS fees on euro or US dollar purchases, and the first €1,000 or $1,000 of cash from ATMs every 30 days comes without an RBS fee (local ATMs may charge their own). It holds up to €10,000 or $10,000 and is only for sole account holders.

Overdrafts. An arranged overdraft, if approved after a full credit check, costs 39.49% EAR variable; RBS's own example puts £500 at £3.24 for 7 days, £13.87 for 30 days and £28.13 for 60 days. Going overdrawn without one costs the same rate, and a payment refused for lack of money costs £1.55, with total unarranged charges capped at £18.80 a month. An overdraft on your old account doesn't move with the switch, so agree one with RBS first if you need it.

Payments. Faster Payments in pounds are free; a CHAPS payment costs £20. Sending money abroad through the app or Digital Banking is free at standard speed and £15 urgent. Receiving money from abroad is free in euros; other currencies cost £1 under £100 and £7 above.

The Digital Regular Saver has two limits: no more than £150 a calendar month, and the top rate only on the first £5,000 (1.00% above that). If you later close or switch away your RBS current account, you can only withdraw from the saver in a branch, so empty it first.

RBS still offers ways to handle cash that app-only banks don't. Mobile branches visit communities up to five days a week for deposits, withdrawals and bill payments. Banking Hubs, run with Cash Access UK and other banks, offer basic services Monday to Friday, with an RBS team member there once a week. Before relying on a branch, look up your area on RBS's branch locator.

At a Post Office counter you can pay in and take out cash. Cash paid in with your debit card and PIN shows immediately; with a paying-in slip RBS says it is added by the end of the next working day if you beat that Post Office's cut-off time, or two working days if you miss it. At an RBS cash and deposit machine, cash paid in before 3:30pm on a business day is credited the same day.

RBS says its banknotes, like all Scottish and Northern Irish notes, remain legal currency and won't be withdrawn the way Bank of England notes are, so there is no end date for accepting them. Customers can swap up to £250 of out-of-circulation notes; above that, RBS pays them into your account and you withdraw new ones, which counts towards your cash deposit limit.

If you lose your card, the app's Get Cash feature gives you a code for up to £130 every 24 hours from RBS-branded cash machines, as long as you have at least £10 available and an active debit card, locked or not.

Everything in the offer hinges on the app, so check your phone first. It is free for customers aged 11 and over with a compatible iPhone or Android phone and a UK mobile number or an international number from a supported country. On the App Store it needs iOS 16.0 or later, which rules out some older iPhones. The offer terms accept a login on any device that supports the app.

Beyond the basics (pots, Round Ups into an instant access savings account, bill splitting up to £500, payment alerts and the TransUnion credit score), the two features worth knowing are the Travel account and Get Cash. You can open one Travel account in euros and one in US dollars, top them up at the rate shown in the app, and spend or withdraw abroad as described above.

The Digital Regular Saver is open to RBS current account holders aged 16 and over, one each. You set up a standing order of £1 to £150 a month from your RBS current account and can add extra money from elsewhere as long as the month's total stays within £150. Interest is calculated daily and paid on the first business day of each month, and you can withdraw at any time.

On 11 October 2026 the Royal Bank of Scotland app was rated 4.77 from 254,284 ratings on the App Store and 4.7 from about 122,000 reviews on Google Play. Of the 200 most recent App Store reviews, posted between 23 July and 9 October, 133 gave five stars and 39 gave one.

The one- to three-star reviews repeat a handful of themes. The most common is a prompt to rate the app that appears after making a payment. Others are logins failing or hanging on "Verifying your device" after the early-October update, having to register again after changing phone or password, payments defaulting to the wrong account, older iPhones shut out by the iOS 16 requirement, money-in notifications stopping after an update, a chatbot that doesn't solve the problem, and branch closures. On Google Play, users add clunky navigation, cheque deposits failing and payees not being shared between joint account holders.

Trustpilot is less useful here. The profile for rbs.co.uk is titled Royal Bank of Scotland Business and hasn't been claimed by the bank. It scored 1.2 from 927 reviews, only 11 of them from the last 12 months, and its recent reviews mix personal and business banking. Its complaints (being kept from a human by the chatbot, long waits, lockouts) echo the app reviews.

You must be 18 or over and live in the UK. Apply online or in the app with your address, contact details, nationality and tax residency. RBS's partner Mitek checks your identity by matching a selfie to photo ID: a passport, a UK or EU/EEA driving licence, or an EU/EEA national ID card. RBS may also ask for proof of address, such as a utility or council tax bill. Without photo ID you can still apply online, but RBS will ask for original documents within 14 days, by post or at a branch. The decision is instant, though the account can take 3 to 5 days if RBS needs more information. Statements are online, not posted.

CASS moves your balance, salary, Direct Debits and standing orders over 7 working days and closes the old account. You can use the old account, card included, up to and including day 6, but don't set up new payments on it. Direct Debits and standing orders only appear at RBS once the first payment goes out. Savings, other products and third-party app permissions don't move. Once a switch has started you can't cancel it; if you picked a future start date, you can cancel up to 7 days before it.

You can close the account at any time with no closure fee, but keep it open, and on an eligible account type, until the £200 arrives. On Reward, exchange your Rewards first: once MyRewards closes you have 90 days to use them. Empty the Digital Regular Saver before you leave too.

Consider it if you have never had a switch bonus from RBS, NatWest or Ulster Bank, held no RBS current account on 6 May 2026, and have a current account at another CASS bank you are happy to close. It suits people in Scotland who want a local high-street bank, and anyone who wants a second £120,000 of FSCS protection separate from NatWest's. Choose Reward if £1,250 a month already arrives from outside RBS and you have two Direct Debits to move; otherwise Select does the job without a fee.

Skip it if you or a joint account holder have ever had NatWest Group switch cash, if you would rather do NatWest's offer (you can only have one), if you need to keep your old account open, or if you have no phone that runs the app. Heavy travellers on Select should plan to use the Travel account or a no-fee card abroad.

RBS also advertises a £500 switch offer on Premier accounts, which need a minimum income, borrowing or savings. We haven't reviewed its terms here, and Premier accounts are excluded from the £200 offer.