Bank of England resolves payments issue that threatened home sales

A global payments issues that could have hit home sales has now been resolved, the Bank of England has confirmed.

A statement from the central bank earlier today said a global payments issue is affecting the its CHAPS service and delaying some high value and time-sensitive payments, including some house purchases.

This could have hit agents, conveyancers, buyers and sellers trying to complete property deals today.

But the central bank later confirmed the issue has been fixed.

It said:  "We are pleased to confirm that the third party supplier has restored service following their earlier issues, and CHAPS payments are settling as normal. 

"We expect that all payments received by the Bank today will be settled by the end of the day.

"f you are concerned about a CHAPS payment you plan to make or receive today, please contact your bank, or other payment service provider."

Joe Pepper, UK chief executive of digital property exchange and data insight business PEXA, suggested this is another sign that the technology and infrastructure supporting the property market is no longer fit for purpose. It is creaking at the seams. Buying a home is a stressful and laborious enough experience as it is for consumers without it being compounded by payments falling through or getting held up.

"Digitisation cannot come soon enough. With new regulation putting consumer outcomes front and centre, it is imperative that we see the adoption of new, reliable technology that improves the experience for home movers and remortgagers, speeding up transaction processes from days to minutes.

"Working with the Bank of England, we have built an entirely new payment system for the housing market – an alternative to CHAPS - and we are working to embed this with the industry. We believe having a scalable system that can reliably handle peaks in demand will future proof the housing market, preventing this type of issue from recurring."

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2024/july/chaps-issue-resolved