Some Federal Reserve services down due to 'operational error'

[WASHINGTON] The US central bank saw some services interrupted due to an "operational error," the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

A Fed spokeswoman did not specify whether a hack was suspected in the outage.

"A Federal Reserve operational error resulted in disruption of service in several business lines," the spokeswoman said.

"We are restoring services and are communicating with all Federal Reserve Financial Services customers about the status of operations."

The outage began late morning Wednesday.

According to US media, the system linking the Fed to commercial banks was affected.

The Fed operates in effect as the bank for such commercial banks and has a system for transfering funds from account to account called FedACH.

Another service, called FedCash, was also down for a period of time.

By Wednesday evening, the Federal Reserve Bank Services website showed most operations were working, but that two services related to wiring funds had "service issues" and another service related to accounts was experiencing a "service disruption".

Operating hours were extended to allow for the completion of transactions that were affected by the outage, the Fed spokeswoman said.

The disruptions raised eyebrows in the financial world as a FedACH system failure can have significant impact on payrolls, tax deductions, social security payouts, car loan payments and utility bills.

AFP