The Federal Reserve reports several business lines interrupted by an “operational error”

In addition to establishing monetary policy, one of the lesser-known roles of the Fed includes acting as a bank for the nation’s banks, as well as for the U.S. Treasury Department. It provides services, including the collection of checks and the electronic transfer of funds, and through the sale and redemption of Treasury bills.

The Fed sent an alert to these customers at 12:43 pm ET of “a possible problem or interruption of various services.” In a later alert, he said Fed staff were aware of “an interruption to all services” as of 11:15 a.m.

“We recognize that payment terms are affected and we will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when they become available,” the alert said.

One of the disconnected services was the Fedwire Funds Service, which the Fed describes as “the leading electronic funds transfer service on which banks, businesses and government agencies rely to make same-day transactions with a critical mission.” Entities use the service to send or receive payments, settle positions with other financial institutions and send tax payments, among other activities.

In a notice sent to bank regulators, a Treasury Department official said the outage “required a restart of servers affecting all payment channels,” adding that the service would be restored on Wednesday afternoon.

“While the root cause is currently being assessed, there are no indications that the problem is the result of a cyberattack,” the official noted.

Write to Paul Kiernan to [email protected]