Lloyds Bank is offering customers £250 free cash - and you don't need to switch accounts

The scheme rewards account holders who successfully encourage friends to open a current account with the high street lender.

For each successful referral, both the existing customer and their newly signed-up friend receive £50 each.

There is no cap on how many people can be referred throughout the year, though the referring customer's earnings are limited to £250 within any calendar year.

This means customers would need to bring five friends on board to maximise their potential rewards.

Crucially, no account switching is required to benefit from the offer.

To participate in the referral programme, existing Lloyds customers must access the mobile banking app and select the option to share a link with a friend.

Once generated, the referral link remains active for 30 days, during which time the friend must click through and successfully open a qualifying current account.

Should the link expire before being used, customers can simply create a fresh one through the app.

However, Lloyds warns that if a friend uses an expired link to open an account, neither party will receive the £50 bonus.

The bank deposits the reward into the referrer's oldest Lloyds current account, with payments appearing as "cash credits" within 30 working days of the new account being opened.

Not all Lloyds current accounts qualify for the referral scheme.

Holders of Under 19s accounts, Smart Start accounts and Student accounts are excluded from making referrals.

For those receiving a referral, the requirements are more stringent.

The friend must be completely new to Lloyds, meaning they cannot hold any existing current account, savings account, credit card, loan or mortgage with the bank.

Additionally, the new customer must keep their account open for a minimum of seven days to qualify for the bonus.

Joint accounts are not eligible under the scheme, with new accounts needing to be opened in the customer's sole name.

Anyone who has previously received payment through the refer a friend offer is also ineligible.

The referral scheme relies on customers accessing Lloyds' mobile banking app, which experienced significant disruption earlier this week.

Thousands of customers found themselves locked out of their online accounts and the app during an outage that began around 3pm.

At its peak, more than 2,700 users reported problems to the tracking website DownDetector, with many expressing frustration at being unable to transfer funds.

The bank acknowledged the issue and confirmed services were restored later that day.

Lloyds stated: "We're sorry for the problems logging into our app and online banking earlier today. Things are now back to normal. Thanks for bearing with us."