Global banking officials are investigating the cause of a worldwide "payments issue" which delayed some high value and time sensitive money transfers, including house purchases for several hours.
Swift, the global financial artery that allows the smooth and rapid transfer of money across borders, said that it was taking the incident "extremely seriously" and apologised for the disruption caused.
Earlier, the Bank of England had warned that payments made via the CHAPS system, used by traditional UK High Street banks as well as international lenders, could be affected by a problem in the wider global payments network.
The Bank said the issue at Swift had been fixed after few hours.
Swift said the problem causing payments to be delayed for some customers had been caused by "an operational incident".
The problem was not cyber-related, it said.
"We are in contact with our customers to support them in mitigating the consequences on their operations and in turn on their own customers’ transactions," a statement said.
The issue did not affect ordinary debit and credit payments, cash machines or bank transfers.
The Bank of England said any outstanding payments which had been set to be transferred would be settled by the end of the day and advised anyone who was worried about a CHAPS payment to contact their bank.
"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.