A transaction processing system capable of processing transactions and implementing a flexible circuit breaker process during an event. A circuit breaker module initiates a circuit breaker event (CBE), an account identification module identifies one or more affected account IDs, and a rule generation module generates conditional rules for evaluating each transaction presented to a transaction processing module. If a transaction presented to the transaction processing module satisfies the conditional rule, the transaction is not processed. Transactions not processed are stored in memory and groups of impacted transactions are assigned to resource modules based on common characteristics. The resource module determines if impacted transactions should be allowed to process.