UK’s payment systems meltdown prompts Bank of England investigation – the worst in nearly nine years

Bank of England officials are currently investigating a major disruption to the UK’s banking payment systems, making it the worst disruption in nearly nine years. The outage, which lasted for approximately five-and-a-half hours, may have caused delays in home buying and selling transactions.

The Bank of England stated that a “technical issue” affected its real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service and CHAPS high-value payments system, both of which handle hundreds of billions of pounds in transactions daily. Normal operation was restored by approximately 11:30am, but a backlog of payments needed to be processed.

The Bank assured that there would be no outstanding payments left after closing the system in the evening. However, officials are treating this incident as a “serious” matter and are investigating the causes to prevent future disruptions.

Probe: The Bank of England, which is run by governor Andrew Bailey (pictured) said a ‘technical issue’ hit its payments system

A similar disruption occurred in October 2014, lasting nine hours and prompting an apology from then-governor Mark Carney. The Bank of England is committed to resolving this issue and ensuring that the payment systems operate smoothly to support economic activity.

While the glitch did not affect day-to-day consumer financial services, such as online banking transactions and card payments, the RTGS and CHAPS systems play a crucial role in settling payments between major financial firms and facilitating large consumer transactions.