A number of house purchases across the UK delayed by a system glitch that affected the Chaps payments system on Thursday. A lot of homebuyers and movers face issues with this problem. At the later part of the day, 4:30 PM, the issue was said to be fixed by the Bank of England; however, it caused widespread fatigue throughout the day.

Significant delays hit many across the UK who were trying to buy homes on Thursday. What was the problem? Well, it was a fault in something called CHAPS, one of the UK’s vital payments systems. It is a huge system enabling the transfer of large sums of money safely and quickly around the country, say when someone is buying a house or paying for something expensive.

What Went Wrong?

The Bank of England said there was a “global payments problem” with Chaps. This system usually deals with around £350 billion each day! Due to this issue, a lot of payments for house purchases were delayed.

The Impact

Imagine being ready to get into your new pad, unable to do so because the money just hasn’t gone through. That is exactly what happened to many. They were ‘stuck waiting for the green light’, with their removal vans parked and nothing they could do.

Anthony Codling, who is a housing analyst, mentioned, “The Chaps collapse could leave hundreds of homebuyers out in the cold.” He said how, on average, about 4,000 housing transactions were taking place each day, so this was largely a big issue.

How Was It Resolved?

By Thursday, 4:30 PM, the Bank of England declared that the issue was already resolved and that the service provider was already able to restore the service. They have also assured everybody that all the payments received on that day will still be settled before the end of the day.

Previous Issues with Chaps

This wasn’t the first time that problems have plagued Chaps. There were similar issues last August. And in October 2014, Chaps suffered a nearly 10-hour outage that prompted an apology from the then Bank governor, Mark Carney, and an official investigation.

Reactions from the Industry

People working in the housing and finance industry responded. Jack Tutton, who is a director of SJ Mortgages, said: Normally funds are sent to solicitors the day prior to a house sale being completed. So having this issue on Thursday – the busiest day for transactions – was particularly bad timing.

Hannah Bashford, director at Model Financial Solutions, added people trying to complete their house purchase on Thursday could end up with “nowhere to move to if funds aren’t passed through the system in time.”

What Wasn’t Affected?

This must be set against an appreciation of the fact that other payment systems worked perfectly. That is to say, card payments, bank transfers, and cashpoints all worked perfectly. The problem was only with Chaps that deals with really huge transactions.

Conclusion

By Thursday, the Chaps problems with the payments system caused many people much stress and delays in house buying. The problem was fixed in the afternoon, but it really exposed just how essential these systems are to smooth and timely transactions. Let’s hope that future improvements will prevent such disruptions from happening again.