‘Operational error’ causes Fed payment system to crash

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s back-end payment system that banks, government entities and investors rely on to transfer cash temporarily went dark.

The Fed blamed an “operational error” for FedWire’s collapse, and was able to restore services after being down for 2 1/2 hours on Wednesday.

FedWire is the Federal Reserve’s real-time wire transfer service that is used to send large sums of cash between banks, federal and state governments as well as banks that need to clear funds.

Trillions of dollars move through the FedWire infrastructure on a daily basis.