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Technical problems affecting a vital payments system have caused delays in some home purchases, the Bank of England said.
The outages affected the central bank's Clearing House Automated Payment System (Chaps), which processes around £360bn of transactions a day.
It was later confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the issue had been resolved.
Banks, businesses and individuals use Chaps to buy expensive items, such as a car or to pay the deposit on a house.
It is also commonly used by attorneys to complete home sales.
The bank had said a “global payments issue” was affecting the service and delaying some high-value and urgent payments, including some home purchases.
Individuals and businesses were still able to use ATMs, card payments and bank transfers as normal, as retail payments were not affected.
After resolving the issue, the Bank said: “We are pleased to confirm that the third-party provider has restored service following the previous issues and Chaps payments are clearing as normal.
“We expect all payments received by the Bank today to be settled by the end of the day.
“If you have concerns about a Chaps payment you plan to make or receive today, please contact your bank or other payment service provider.”
Toby Leek, Chairman of Propertymark, said: “Completing a property purchase can be extremely stressful even without technical issues, however, it is important to remember that if systems ever cause unexpected problems at a vital time within the transaction process, these issues tend to be quickly sorted out.
“The flip side is that in the short term, this can have the potential to leave people waiting outside their new property with a moving van full of their belongings in very extreme cases.”
The bank experienced similar outages in August 2023, which paralyzed the system for approximately six hours.
Meanwhile, major banks were hit by outages affecting digital banking last month, leaving some customers temporarily unable to send or receive money.
