Our free bill splitting app

Housemate is open to all users across the UK. If you’re aged 17 or over, all you need is a UK bank account, email address and a mobile phone registered in the UK.

You don’t need to be a customer of NatWest to use Housemate. However, the rent recognition feature is only open to those based in England or Wales. If you live outside England or Wales, you will be able to use all the other great features of Housemate, except for rent recognition.

Housemate is currently available for Android (v6.0 and above) and iOS devices (v11.0 and above).

You can link eligible accounts with the following banks to Housemate:

• Allied Irish Bank (GB)
• Bank of Ireland
• Bank of Scotland
• Barclaycard
• Barclays
• Capital One
• Danske Bank
• First Direct
• First Trust Bank
• Halifax
• HSBC
• Lloyds
• M&S Bank
• MBNA
• Monzo Bank
• Nationwide
• NatWest
• Revolut
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Santander
• Starling
• TSB
• Tesco
• Ulster Bank

Unfortunately, it is not currently possible to link a PayPal account to Housemate.

Yes, Housemate is a free app open to everyone in the UK who meets the eligibility criteria.

Open Banking is a secure way to give providers access to your financial information. It allows you to view new products and services, gain a more detailed understanding of your accounts and make the most of your money.

Every 90 days, we’ll ask you to renew your consent to continue having your bank accounts linked to Housemate. Linking your accounts to Housemate with Open Banking will allow you to easily add expenses, pay and receive payments from housemates and set up rent recognition. You can add new bank accounts or remove this consent at any time.

Unfortunately, it is only possible to pay housemates that have added a bank account to Housemate. Please ask this housemate to add a bank account first so you can pay them back. However, if your housemate isn’t able to add an account to Housemate or they have already settled the payment with you outside of the app, you can register this payment by choosing ‘Paid in cash / with other account’ when adding a payment.

To help lenders make decisions and assess your application for credit, they use a process called credit scoring. Your credit score is a numerical representation of your credit file and predicts the likelihood you’ll pay your credit on time in the future.

As part of the credit scoring process, lenders will consider information from credit reference agencies alongside their own lending criteria. Your credit history is all the information held on how you’ve managed credit in the past.

The more data you have in your credit file, the more likely it is that lenders will be able to identify you if you apply for financial products. These may include loans, mortgages, credit cards and other common household bills including phone and energy contracts.  

Rent recognition is an innovative feature in Housemate that allows you to build your history with our partner Experian by getting recognition for your rental payments (currently only available in England & Wales). It will not directly improve your credit score but it can help lenders identify you if you apply for credit.

Simply, go to 'Rent' to get set up, pay your rent on time and our partner Experian will start adding these to your history once they have recognised 6 payments (note: rent recognition will never negatively affect your credit score).

There are numerous helpful tips on how to build your credit score in the ‘Credit’ section of Housemate. You can find more information on the building credit guide from Experian.

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure with us and with the third parties who act on our behalf. For more information about the steps we are taking to protect your information please visit here. 

Your right to privacy and online security is important. Our Privacy Statement describes how NatWest Housemate as part of the NatWest Group Plc and other authorised third parties will use the personal and financial information that is provided or collected in the NatWest Housemate app in order to facilitate the product.