Federal Reserve Nationwide Outage Impacts US Banking System

The US Federal Reserve suffered a massive IT systems outage today that prevented wire transfers, ACH transactions, and other services from operating.

When performing a US wire transfer or ACH withdrawal/deposit, the transaction first goes through the Federal Reserve Bank systems who facilitate the transaction.

Today, the Federal Reserve banking systems suffered an outage caused by an “operational error” on their end. In other words, someone made a mistake that caused the systems to go down.

At this time, the Federal Reserve Bank has not provided much details other than their system status report reproduced below.

February 24, 2021 2:32 PM Eastern Time
Access to FedCash Services via the FedLine Web solution has been restored. We are extending the cash order deadline for FedCash Services to 3:30 p.m. local time of the servicing Federal Reserve Bank. Please contact your local FedCash Services customer support if you have any questions. For a complete list of customer support contacts for your institution, please visit the Contact page.

February 24, 2021 2:17 PM Eastern Time
The issue impacting Central Bank applications has been resolved and users may resume normal access.

February 24, 2021 2:14 PM Eastern Time
Beginning around 11:15 a.m. ET, Federal Reserve Bank staff became aware of a disruption for all services.  Our technical teams have determined that the cause is a Federal Reserve operational error.  We will provide updates via service status as more information becomes available.  We acknowledge that payment deadlines are impacted and will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when available.  Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the issue. 

February 24, 2021 1:18 PM Eastern Time
The Federal Reserve Bank staff is currently investigating a disruption to multiple services. We will continue to provide updates as soon as they are available.

February 24, 2021 12:43 PM Eastern Time
The Federal Reserve Bank staff is currently investigating a possible issue or disruption to multiple services. We will provide updates as soon as they are available.

This outage affected almost every electronic service offered by the Federal Reserve Bank, including Account Services, Central Bank, Check 21, Check Adjustments, FedACH, FedCash, FedLine Advantage, FedLine Command, FedLine Direct, FedLine Web, Fedwire Funds, Fedwire Securities, and National Settlement.

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Due to these outages, numerous cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, reported that they were unable to perform ACH deposits or withdrawals.

The Federal Reserve is down and this will impact all ACH and wire related activities on Binance US. For service updates, you can follow their service status here: https://t.co/k14lSL6IO7— Binance.US (@BinanceUS) February 24, 2021

BleepingComputer has contacted the Federal Reserve Bank with questions about the outage but has not heard back.

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This story will be updated as more information becomes available.