The Bank of England's high-value payment system went offline yesterday, causing great inconvenience to businesses and prospective home buyers around the country.
The Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Payment System, which is used to transfer house deposits and other large sums of money from one bank to another, went offline at 6am yesterday morning and remained down until late in the afternoon, with the Bank of England vowing to stay open until 8pm to deal with the backlog.
The Bank of England announced it was having problems with its network at 11.30am, although it did advise some of the biggest banks of the fault earlier in the day.
Despite the clearing house automated payment system (Chaps) system also being down, some payments were able to be processed manually, despite it adding risk to transactions, while smaller transfers were able to be made through the direct debit or standing order system as usual.
The Bank of England said: "The Bank of England has identified a technical issue related to some routine maintenance of the RTGS payment system and has paused settlement while we resolve it."
Some high street banks decided to make special arrangements for customers who were waiting to complete house purchases, with the Royal Bank of Scotland using an alternative system to transfer large sums of money.
Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the Treasury select committee of MPs told the Guardian: "A crucial part of the UK's financial infrastructure failed for several hours today. I will be writing to the Bank of England to find out why. The whole economy depends on a reliable payment system. We need to have confidence that the cause has been found and addressed."
The RTGS makes 140,000 payments a day, worth an average of 277 billion.
