Original title: the Federal Reserve system crashed, and its payment system service was interrupted for a time.

The Fed's payment system, which executes millions of financial transactions a day, suffered about four hours of service outages on Wednesday, affecting more than a dozen Fed businesses, including the automated clearing house system FedACH.

ACH is a nationwide electronic money transfer system that handles payroll, social security benefits, tax rebates, corporate payments, and utility fees. According to the latest available data, the business service processed an average of 62.1 million transactions a day in 2019, with an average value of $1802.

Richmond Fed spokesman Strader said in a statement:

An operational error by the Federal Reserve led to service disruptions on several lines of business. We are in the process of resuming services and are communicating with all customers using Fed financial services about health. "

Strader declined to comment on whether the outage was caused by system updates or human error.

The incident did not have much practical impact, and within financial companies, traders remained calm and were still processing trades. 'The initial confusion subsided because many people realized they were not affected, 'said a person familiar with the matter.

As of 15:00 local time, ACH, which handles electronic interbank transfers, had returned to normal, but a number of services, including the central bank system, had not been restored, according to a website operated by the Fed.

Although the Fed's system outage did not last long and was largely repaired during the day, service disruptions once again raised questions about the critical infrastructure that Americans use to process payments. Prior to that, there were two major disruptions to Fed payment system services in 2019. At that time, FedWire interbank funds transfer service was interrupted for about three hours. The Fed blamed "internal technical problems" but declined to provide further details.

Bloomberg News sought more information about the incident under the Freedom of Information Act at the time, but the council rejected the request and subsequent appeals.

It is important to note that this systemic problem comes at a time when the Fed is preparing to take on more responsibility. The Federal Reserve is developing its own day-to-day settlement payment system, FedNow, which is expected to work with JPMorgan Chase & CoIt competes directly with the industry operating payment system organized by Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc and launched in 2017.