WorldPay - the Royal Bank of Scotland's Internet payment outfit - has launched an "urgent" investigation into why its payment and administration services are "currently unavailable".

A notice on the WorldPay site reads: "We regret that our payment and administration services are currently unavailable - we are investigating with the utmost urgency - we will post further information here as soon as we have it."

WorldPay's problems started early this morning but exactly what's gone wrong is still not known.

A spokesman for the company was unable to shed any light on the matter except to say: "We're not processing the volume of transactions that we're used to."

Last month, WorldPay was floored after being hit with what has been described as the most serious and sustained Internet attack on a UK business to date.

Operations at the Royal Bank of Scotland's Internet payment transaction outfit were blighted for three days last week as the result of a malicious DDoS attack by unidentified computer criminals.

Although customer information was not disclosed by the attack, WorldPay's online payment and administration system were reduced to a crawl due to a flood of malicious traffic directed at its Web-based systems. ®

Related Story

WorldPay recovers from massive attack
WorldPay fights 'massive, orchestrated' attack
WorldPay floored by malicious attack