America gripped by pay out delay (7)
I believe the answer is:
suspend
'delay' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'america gripped by pay out' is the wordplay.
'america' becomes 'us' (abbreviation for the United States).
'gripped by' indicates putting letters inside.
'pay out' becomes 'spend' (I've seen this before).
'us' placed within 'spend' is 'SUSPEND'.
(Other definitions for suspend that I've seen before include "Ban" , "put on line" , "Stop for a time" , "Temporarily halt; hang" , "Temporarily render inoperative" .)