The Bank of England says it suffered “a technical issue” which prevented it from opening its real-time gross settlement service and its CHAPS high-value payments system this morning (14 August).  

The central bank, in a short statement, adds the cause behind the outage “has been resolved and settlement will resume shortly”.  

The bank’s CHAPS system – which stands for Clearing House Automated Payment System — is commonly used by solicitors and conveyancers to complete housing and other property transactions.  

The system is also used by corporate and individuals to complete car purchases and a range of other high-value payments.  

In July, CHAPS processed 4.3 million payments worth £7.4trn, with an average daily value of £351bn, down 6.7% from a year ago.  

The equivalent of the UK’s annual gross domestic product is processed by the system every six working days, says the Bank.  

The central bank recently completed a major upgrade to the system.  

It installed a new ISO 20022 messaging software onto the system on 19 June, after the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority wrote to financial services chief executives on 10 January, informing them this would form a key part of its work this year.  

At the time the body warned heads of financial services: “We expect firms to be ready for this change, ensuring cut-over to the new messaging standard without interruption to customer payments or liquidity management.   

“This includes completing all necessary testing and participating in dress rehearsals and go-live events in full.”  

The system has 37 direct member banks and clearing houses including Bank of America, Euroclear Bank, Deutsche Bank and Bank of China.  

The CHAPS system opens at 6am each working day.   

The Bank adds: “Participants must be open to receive by 8am and must send by 10am. CHAPS closes at 6pm for bank-to-bank payments. Customer payments must be submitted by 5.40pm.”  

Responsibility for the CHAPS system was transferred to the Bank of England in November 2017.