The Federal Reserve’s system for interbank payments went down Wednesday afternoon, according to a website for payment services operated by the U.S. central bank.
“A Federal Reserve operational error resulted in disruption of service in several business lines,” Jim Strader, a spokesman for the Richmond Fed, said in an e-mailed statement. “We are restoring services and are communicating with all Federal Reserve Financial Services customers about the status of operations.”
The outage was widespread across the payment systems maintained by the central bank, including the vital automated clearinghouse system known as FedACH, and the Fedwire Funds interbank transfer service.
ACH is a national system that processes batches of electronic funds transfers such as payroll, social security benefits, tax refunds, corporate payments to vendors and utility payments, according to the Fed’s
The Fed suffered two significant disruptions to the payment system services in 2019.
