Fed payment services back up following disruption

Federal Reserve payment services are back online following a three-hour disruption yesterday that the Fed attributed to "operational error."

What Happened: In an online alert, the Fed said that reserve bank staff noticed at roughly 11:15 a.m. (Eastern time) a service disruption affecting payment deadlines. By 3:25 p.m., services including Check 21, FedACH, FedCash, Fedwire, and National Settlement had resumed processing and reopened.

What Caused It: The Fed cited operational error, noting that the reserve banks "have taken steps to help ensure the resilience of the Fedwire and NSS applications, including recovery to the point of failure."

Others Affected: The Clearing House said the Fed outages created issues on several of its services, including the SVPCO noon settlement, CHIPS and RTP supplemental funding and withdrawals, and ACH file exchanges with FedACH.

What It Means: The Fed alert encourages users to wait for the message backlog to finish processing before submitting additional messages and files or to resend as Possible Duplicate Messages via Fedwire.