Fed's payment services coming back online after outages

The Federal Reserve said key parts of its payments processing services are back online after widespread outages on Feb. 24.

In a 2:57 p.m. ET update, the central bank said processing of FedACH transactions has resumed but noted that a current backlog "may take time to clear" and advised banks against re-sending information.

The Fedwire Funds Service, Fedwire Securities Service, and National Settlement Service have also "resumed processing and are operating normally," the Fed said minutes earlier.

"The Federal Reserve Banks have taken steps to help ensure the resilience of the Fedwire and NSS applications, including recovery to the point of failure," the central bank said in one of its afternoon updates. "Nevertheless, it is critical that you reconcile the messages you believe you had sent or received through the services after waiting several minutes for the backlog of messages to finish processing before you submit additional messages to the Fedwire Funds Service and Fedwire Securities Service and additional settlement files to the National Settlement Service."

Fed staff first become aware of the system disruptions at 11:15 a.m. ET, which Fed technical teams have determined was due to an internal operational error.

The Fed is providing updates on the status of its several payments services as it has more information, the central bank told users earlier in the day.

"We acknowledge that payment deadlines are impacted and will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when available," the central bank said.