House purchases delayed as BoE's CHAPS system hit

The Bank of England said on Thursday that its CHAPS service has been hit by a global payments issue, delaying some high value and time-sensitive payments, including 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 BoE said.

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

Retail payment systems are unaffected so people and businesses can continue to use cash points, card payments and bank transfers as normal.

The Telegraph cited sources at the Bank as saying that the "global issue" with the payments is due to an issue with Swift technology, a global payments technology company.

A source close to Swift said the payments outage which is holding up house purchases across Britain is not the result of a cyber attack.

Toby Leek, president of NAEA Propertymark, said: "Completing on a property can be extremely stressful even without technical issues, however it is important to remember that should systems ever cause unexpected problems at a vital moment within the transactional process these issues do tend to be fixed quickly.

"The flipside is in the short term, this can have the potential to leave people waiting outside their new property with a removal van full of their belongings in very extreme cases."