Embodiments of the present invention disclose a method and an apparatus for transaction processing. The method includes: receiving a transaction request, determining, when it is determined that a real-time account book is undergoing compute-intensive transaction processing, whether an account record of an account on which a transaction is to be performed exists in a temporary account book, and if yes, processing the transaction request based on the account record, and updating the account record in the temporary account book according to a processing result, and if no, reading the account record from the real-time account book, processing the transaction request based on the account record, and recording, in the temporary account book, the updated account record according to a processing result; and updating, after the transaction processing is complete, the real-time account book according to the temporary account book, and deleting the account record after the updating.