the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Washington DC, the Federal Reserve’s electronic payment system used to process transactions like mortgages crashed today, causing chaos in the banking sector. Due to the widespread outage, banks and other financial institutions like credit unions and money transfer companies were unable to send or receive wire transfers.
The Federal Reserve said it was investigating the disruption to multiple services, including the Fedwire funds transfer system that allows financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between more than 9,000 American financing institutions.
The Fed’s automated clearing house (ACH) system, which is one of the systems down, handles direct deposits of payroll, Social Security, and income tax refunds as well as auto payments for mortages and utility bills. Along with the Fed ACH service, other systems impacted included Check 21, FedCash, Fedwire and the national settlement service.
A statement from the central bank said it became aware of a problem around 11:15 a.m. ET. A person at one Wall Street bank said the Fedwire and ACH system appeared to be coming back online around 2:45 p.m. ET.
“Fedwire Funds Service, Fedwire Securities Service, and National Settlement Service have resumed processing and are operating normally,” the Fed said around the same time.
