Federal Reserve payment system crashed, service restored hours later
Outage impacted banks, brokers, mortgage lenders, and their ability to transfer funds in large and small sums
The Federal Reserve's system that allows wire money transfers crashed with intermittent disruptions for about two hours on Wednesday.
The outage impacted customers, which include banks, brokers and mortgage lenders, and their ability to transfer funds in large and small sums.
"A Federal Reserve operational error resulted in disruption of service in several business lines. We are restoring services and are communicating with all Federal Reserve Financial Services customers about the status of operations," Richmond Federal Reserve spokesperson Jim Strader said in a statement to FOX Business.
Systems were fully restored at 2:57 p.m. ET, according to a notification from the Fed.
"Processing of FedACH files has resumed and customers should receive acknowledgements for incoming files," the Federal Reserve Bank Services website reads. "Please note that the backlog of files may take time to clear and do not resend files."
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM CRASH: TIMELINE
The broad outage is being followed by financial players including Cameron Winkelvoss who tweeted the latest update from the Fed detailing systems impacted. He co-founded, along with his brother Tyler, cryptocurrency exchange Gemini.
Fedwire, which is also being affected, functions as the conduit for payments, according to a description on the Fed's website.
"Participants can use this service to send or receive payments for their own accounts or on behalf of corporate or individual clients, to settle commercial payments, to settle positions with other financial institutions or clearing arrangements, to submit federal tax payments or to buy and sell federal funds."