Bank of England says CHAPS payments now settling as normal

The Bank of England said on Thursday that issues affecting its CHAPS service had now been resolved.

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

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

The Bank of England said earlier Thursday that a "global payments issue" was affecting the interbank payments service, delaying some high-value and time-sensitive payments including some house purchases.

Retail payment systems and cash machines were unaffected, the BoE added.

The CHAPS system - which is operated by the BoE - has suffered technical problems before, including in August last year and in 2014 when the Real-Time Gross Settlement system, which underpins CHAPS, did not work normally for several hours.