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Technical Glitch Downs Bank Of England's $110 Trillion Payments System

Tyler Durden's picture




 

The Bank of England's "Real Time Gross Settlement Payment System" (RTGS) - the UK's equivalent of the US FedWire - has gone offline this morning due to a technical glitch, according to The Telegraph. RTGS, which processes large payments in real-time (including home purchases) between British banks - and processed GBP70 trillion in payments across 5000 entities last year - has been down since 6am London time (the fault was disclosed over 5 hours later at 1130 London Time). For now the largest payments are being processed manually and smaller payments are on hold.

 

 

As The Telegraph reports,

The infrastructure that processes large payments including house purchases between British banks has gone offline, the Bank of England has said.

 

The central bank said the “Real Time Gross Settlement Payment System” (RTGS), which settles large transfers between banks, had gone offline, and remained so on Monday morning.

 

It said that the biggest payments were being processed manually and reassured the public that all payments would be on Monday.

 

...

 

The RTGS is set up to settle large payments in real time, rather than at the end of the day, reducing risk.

 

The system - which processes payments such as house purchases - has been down since 6am on Monday morning. The large banks were contacted early in the day, and the Bank disclosed the fault at around 11.30am.

 

...

 

The RTGS routes payments made through CHAPS (the Clearing House Automated Payments System), which settles important and time-sensitive payments, including house purchases.

 

According to the CHAPS website, it processed £70 trillion of payments last year and is used by 5,000 financial institutions.

Why is this serious?

The system helps keep the day-to-day running of banks going by acting as an intermediary between banks. If a payment is going to be made between banks, RTGS credits the bank receiving the funds quickly, and takes funds from the bank sending money, removing the risk for the receiving bank.

 

In effect, RTGS sits at the top of the payment structure for banks, as shown by this Bank of England document:

 

*  *  *
Nothing to see here, move along...

 

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Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:00 | 5354660 NoDebt
NoDebt's picture

Damned Russian hackers again, no doubt.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:02 | 5354665 NotApplicable
NotApplicable's picture

How come no one told me it was a holiday?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:08 | 5354681 Leonardo Fibonacci2
Leonardo Fibonacci2's picture

Take this mutherfucker down!  Ebola has a 21 day incubation period, so i have 18 days left to go.

 

 

 

signed, "the clipboard guy"

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:16 | 5354722 eclectic syncretist
eclectic syncretist's picture

A technical glitch as in "we don't have the funds or credit to cover the transaction"?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:10 | 5354868 USisCorrupt
USisCorrupt's picture

I am sure the Russians are behind IT! Just like MH17 and everything else that is orchestrated by the West.

 

Who CARES!

 

Nothing to see here, MOVE ON !

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:23 | 5354901 philipat
philipat's picture

And Gold is above "Technical" resitance levels. This might, actually, be indicative of something very significant happening behind the curtains??

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:30 | 5354923 svayambhu108
svayambhu108's picture

2014 was a stresfully interesting year

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:50 | 5354989 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

Well, as I keep pointing out; want to make some money? open a futures trading platform, somewhere; and short the GBP; long term. you'll be waiting until early next year, or so; but this is a currency representing a country that doesn't even have anything that could be called an economy. depends on; oil; and "the financial industry"; sound good to you for the next six months? No ? Me neither; and it's objectively overpriced; it's in a well established down trend. Notice I'm talking about a reasonable time interval here; months, not days. sooner or later, within this reasonable time period you'll be able to buy back your short position for a substantiallly lower price; the key idea being substantial.  I can't analysize FX in terms of "pips", or moving averages, or day trading; but then neither can anyone else.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 11:00 | 5355037 philipat
philipat's picture

As in, if you want to rob a bank, the best way is to own one??

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:51 | 5354999 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

Nothing would surprise me less. "Rick, I'm shocked, shocked, I say, to find that gambling has been going on here".

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:05 | 5354675 ThisIsBob
ThisIsBob's picture

It is open season (for lots and lots of people) on Western financial technology.  No need to wonder why.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:13 | 5354708 NoVa
NoVa's picture

I thought it was Duck season! 

no - 

Rabbit season!

 

 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:56 | 5355020 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

LOL.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:23 | 5354744 PT
PT's picture

That's what happens when they take the cheapest quote.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 12:40 | 5355375 just-my-opinion
just-my-opinion's picture

Did he say Trill-yan...who ..... Am I watch this right....I think O has this....bunker time or Putin has his hand on the red button

 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:01 | 5354663 Arius
Arius's picture

i like when they pick a 666 million number ... this is nothing just some trillions here and there all confeti and cliks ... click here and click there

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:03 | 5354664 Al Capowned
Al Capowned's picture

This kind of shit would not happen with Bitcoin, which is available 24/7 365, - Archaic legacy banking system is breaking.

 

Chaps is only available 5 days a week and all payments have to be made by 2pm to gurantee same day trnasaction time. Such out of date technology.

 

http://renegadeinvestor.co.uk/bitcoin-v-uk-retail-banking-david-goliath/

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:05 | 5354672 NoDebt
NoDebt's picture

"This kind of shit would not happen with Bitcoin"

Oh, no, of course not.  Unless you happened to have any of your Bitcoins with Mt. Gox or one of the others that "poofed" them into thin air.  

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:11 | 5354692 shitco.in
shitco.in's picture

Bitcoin on Mt. Gox (or any other exchange) = fiat in the bank

Bitcoin on properly secured paper wallets or with the client, with numerous copies spread throughout the world = redundant stacks of shiny

 

There is a place for physical pm and bitcoin in everyone's portfolio. 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:12 | 5354699 Al Capowned
Al Capowned's picture

Mt.Gox was a third party exchange that had nothing to do with the actual underlying Bitcoin transactional network.

There were warning signs a year before it collapsed. The underlying Bitcoin transactional protocol is technically far superior to the current banking sytems.

 

 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:18 | 5354729 shitco.in
shitco.in's picture

The sad part is that the Bank of England already knows this - http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/...

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:06 | 5354674 NotApplicable
NotApplicable's picture

Then there are armored trucks that cannot even make a same day delivery.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:12 | 5354694 Quinvarius
Quinvarius's picture

Yeah it would.  And it would be worse because bitcoin has a stupid design.  Its blockchain is currently over 20 gigs and growing exponentially.  It will come to screetching halt all by itself.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:14 | 5354705 LULZBank
LULZBank's picture

You mean the bitcoin users will be affected?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:14 | 5354710 Al Capowned
Al Capowned's picture

Yeah because hard disk space isnt growing exponentially either is it .......

http://gizmodo.com/bigger-is-better-seagate-just-shipped-the-worlds-firs...

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 11:16 | 5355094 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

You apparently do not understand what an RTGS is, or how they actually operate.

From your link...

"The information collected is publicly available information from 1 major high street bank in the UK. Whilst other banks may differ slightly in there fees structure this information should provide a fairly reliable benchmark across the main players in the industry."

They don't show customers how the sausage is made (for various and valid reasons).

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:07 | 5354678 WTFUD
WTFUD's picture

Don't worry everything's FIXED.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:12 | 5354693 LULZBank
LULZBank's picture

You mean the Fix is in?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:22 | 5354740 WTFUD
WTFUD's picture

Yes, it's just a matter of rooting out their next FIX. Everyone knows that you need more of the fix like a drug addict just to maintain parity .

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 12:18 | 5355275 DetectiveStern
DetectiveStern's picture

It wasn't a very big deal. From what I could see monitoring payments in affected maybe 15/20 payments at my firm. Things go more tits up when our own systems go down. Most people buying GBP based securities are gonna go through Crest or Euroclear anyway. 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:09 | 5354685 Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance's picture

"For now the largest payments are being processed manually and smaller payments are on hold."

Let the little people eat cake....or suck hind teat as the case may be.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:21 | 5354739 eclectic syncretist
eclectic syncretist's picture

And you just know that those small payments are more important and immediately meaningful in the lives of the people making them than the larger payments are to those that they belong to.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:09 | 5354686 Racer
Racer's picture

The payment pyramid

Left off the word scheme at the end of it

Says it all!!

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:10 | 5354687 Ban KKiller
Ban KKiller's picture

Take one two ounce magnet, grind  to powder, release in server room air cooling ducts. Or so I've heard...

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:20 | 5354735 Tijuana Donkey Show
Tijuana Donkey Show's picture

Carbon fiber works well, is shorts everything out. Magnets don't work in the airducts, most airducts are galvenized steel. 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 13:54 | 5355749 trulz4lulz
trulz4lulz's picture

Ohhh...such a beautiful dirty trick!

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:13 | 5354698 Latitude25
Latitude25's picture

"and takes funds from the bank sending money, removing the risk for the receiving bank."

So this is about which banks were at risk when this happened.  Convenient technical glitches.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:12 | 5354701 LULZBank
LULZBank's picture

The glitches have moved on from hitting Commercial banks to Central Banks now.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:18 | 5354723 kurzdump
kurzdump's picture

Complexity is a bitch.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:18 | 5354727 SpanishGoop
SpanishGoop's picture

Why did i read RIGS here.

This is not a game...

 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:24 | 5354746 RadioactiveRant
RadioactiveRant's picture

If they don't fix it, will it cause problems for the LINK ATM network? Things could get interesting if the sheeple can't get their monopoly money.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:27 | 5354765 Al Capowned
Al Capowned's picture

It wont affect ATM's, it is mainly for large time sensitive transactions. 

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:49 | 5354815 RadioactiveRant
RadioactiveRant's picture

So how will LINK members settle up at the end of the day if the CB clearance system is FUBAR?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:27 | 5354755 Son of Captain Nemo
Son of Captain Nemo's picture

The Bank of England's "Real Time Gross Settlement Payment System" (RTGS) - the UK's equivalent of the US FedWire - has gone offline this morning due to a technical glitch,

Any employees responsible for the operation(s) of the RTGS suffering from symptoms related to high fever, headaches and vomiting -right about now?!!!...

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:28 | 5354763 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

This is just a preview of what will happen when the collapse comes. The big boys will get their stocks and gold traded while the little guy gets shafted. They are just testing the manual 'little guy bypass' system now.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:27 | 5354764 Watson
Watson's picture

BoE announcement above:
>>>
...all payments made will be processed.
<<<

Notice full stop.

So _when_ will those payments be made?

Watson

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:57 | 5354839 RadioactiveRant
RadioactiveRant's picture

When it becomes serious, you have to lie.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:31 | 5354773 q99x2
q99x2's picture

Arrest the Queen for treason.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 11:00 | 5355032 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

LOL. now that is funny. while you're at it, arrest Obamy and his buddies.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:36 | 5354784 LULZBank
LULZBank's picture

Cameron ran out of cash.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:38 | 5354786 Dre4dwolf
Dre4dwolf's picture

so what i get from the diagram is that the banks are like hydra, you cut the head off and four more grow back.

i think we have been going about this the wrong way clearly the way to defeat hydra is to cut off its legs not the head ^^

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:38 | 5354794 LawsofPhysics
LawsofPhysics's picture

Shit, everyone's on the fucking dole in the U.K.

nothing to see here, move along.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 09:51 | 5354818 Fix-ItSilly
Fix-ItSilly's picture

Late stage Ponzi schemes always act like this.  Interview Madoff re. tightening liquidity. Hard to shift around funds without exposure.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:55 | 5355014 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

Wouldn't surprise me a bit. You don't trust J.P. Morgan ? England has huge banks doing world wide "business" that make Morgan look like Sunday School.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:03 | 5354851 giggler321
giggler321's picture

hope this comms link doesn't down when they really start printing.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:05 | 5354859 smacker
smacker's picture

I had no idea the BoE even had a role in handling payments between commercial banks.

Are they not capable of doing it themselves??

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 11:16 | 5355090 crowd
crowd's picture

Only the numbers in BoE's computers are good as GBP so they have to. Or pay with physical cash.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:06 | 5354860 PrDtR
PrDtR's picture

WELL .. it is a RIGGEDs [RIGs] Scheme !!! 

/SARC ON

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:33 | 5354935 chinaboy
chinaboy's picture

110 trillion!!! How many times of U.K.'s GDP is that? Banking criminals in the U.K. are selling and buying they countries's total worth many times a day?

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:51 | 5354996 LULZBank
Mon, 10/20/2014 - 10:54 | 5355010 SAT 800
SAT 800's picture

T he English financial world has been dependent on the "financial industry" for many, many, years. they're processing payments from everybody to everybody; they're a "money center" like New York.

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 11:32 | 5355146 bluskyes
bluskyes's picture

next in-line is the BIS

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 12:43 | 5355385 just-my-opinion
just-my-opinion's picture

Lets not too ex-cided....There is a reason why they say....Don't mess with Texas.....Good game tonight....Time to play the game

Mon, 10/20/2014 - 12:47 | 5355403 HalinCA
HalinCA's picture

From Russia with love?  Why not, as the UK is lining up against them ...

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