The Bank of England  said a “global payments issue” delayed some high-value and time-sensitive payments, including house purchases for several hours.

“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.

Earlier, legal and property firms said delays of up to four hours were occurring before third-party contractors working for the Bank were able to restore services. It said Chaps payments are settling as normal and it was hopeful all outstanding payments would be settled rapidly.

The Bank’s Chaps payment system processes more than £300bn worth of transactions a day, including banks paying one another large sums.

When delays first began occurring the central bank said it was “mindful of the impact this is likely to have” and was working with other organisations to resolve the issue urgently.

“If you are concerned about a Chaps payment you plan to make or receive today, please contact your bank, or other payment service provider,” the Bank said.

“Retail payment systems are unaffected so people and businesses can continue to use cash points, card payments and bank transfers as normal.”

It was reported the problem originated with part of a wider global network known as Swift. It is not believed to be a cyber incident.

Toby Leek, of Propertymark, the property professionals body, said: “Completing on a property can be extremely stressful even without technical issues, however, it is important to remember that should systems ever cause unexpected problems at a vital moment within the transactional process these issues do tend to be fixed quickly.

“The flipside is in the short term this can have the potential to leave people waiting outside their new property with a removal van full of their belongings in very extreme cases.”

The Bank experienced similar outages in August last year, which stopped the system for about six hours. The Swift payment system was set up in 1973 and is based in Belgium. It links more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions across hundreds of countries with an messaging system which alerts users when payments have been sent and arrived.