Bank of England warns of global issue hitting bank transfers of large payments that could delay house sales

THE BANK of England (BoE) has issued a warning over a global payments issue which could impact house sales.

The central bank has issued a warning over problems with its CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payment System).

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CHAPS payments are usually large bank transfers which you have to pay a fee for, for example a homebuyer would use it when transferring their deposit.

CHAPS typically processes daily volumes of 200,000 transactions worth £360 billion.

The BoE said the payment issue has been triggered by a global error at Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

The issues experienced by SWIFT are not being caused by a hack.

SWIFT has been approached for a comment.

A statement from the BoE said: "A global payments issue is affecting the Bank's CHAPS service and delaying some high value and time-sensitive payments, including some house purchases.

"We are mindful of the impact this is likely to have and are working closely with a third party supplier, industry and other authorities to resolve the issue as promptly as possible."

The statement said anyone who uses the CHAPS payment system and is concerned about payments being or received today should contact their bank, building society or payment service provider.

It added that retail payment systems are not impacted so people can continue using cash points, card payments and bank transfers.

The payments issue today comes after the BoE suffered a similar outage in August last year.

The central bank's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service and CHAPS system suffered a "technical issue", although issues were reportedly resolved within 24 hours.

The BoE's website says several thousands financial institutions use CHAPS to make payments.

Chris Barry, director at property law firm Thomas Legal, said:
"This issue will affect property exchanges and completions up and down the country today.

"Whilst many completions are preset and happen earlier in the day, some will still happen between the issue being announced and the cut off of 4pm.

"For many, this has just made an already stressful day even more stressful.

"Most contracts have a 12 or 1pm hard time embedded so if the payment is being made now they are technically in breach of contract."