RBA crash takes down instant payments nationwide

Australia’s banks are working to clear a huge backlog of instant payments after an outage in a Reserve Bank of Australia clearing service.

The RBA said on Twitter that it had "experienced an internal system engineering issue yesterday evening".

"The issue has been contained," it said. "Impacted external services are now operational, however there has been some delay to overnight processing of payments.”

"We are working with the banks to clear the backlog as quickly as possible."

All 85 banks that use the Osko fast payment service were impacted. 

Bendigo Bank urged its customers not to re-try transactions, but to wait for the backlog caused by the outage to clear.

ANZ similarly said that while new payments made via Osko were processing as normal, payments delayed by the outage "would take longer to clear".

It could be up to two days before a customer knows whether a payment cleared, or failed and has to be resubmitted, ANZ said.

Police Bank similarly said that the "industry-wide issue" had "delayed or prevented the processing of Osko/PayID/NPP payments made by our members, and customers of other banks."

"Our team is working to clear the queue of pending payments submitted during the Osko/PayID/NPP incident," it said.