August 1, 2024—On July 20, 2024, the Federal Reserve and its financial services industry partners celebrated the one-year anniversary of the FedNow® Service. The Fed reports that more than 900 financial institutions—78% credit unions and community banks—are now live on the service.
“It is encouraging to see how financial institutions have embraced the FedNow® Service,” said Cindy Nelson, EasCorp President and vocal advocate of the Fed’s public instant payments rail. “We believe in the potential of this new rail to not only improve financial inclusion in the United States but also help cooperative financial institutions meet market demand for fast, secure, and modern payment tools. While ubiquity will take more time, the sheer speed of the rail’s growth and the level of financial institution participation in that growth speaks volumes about their deep understanding of what this service means and will come to mean, as innovation continues, for consumers and businesses.”
There are now over 30 service providers, including EasCorp’s technology CUSO, Vertifi Software, offering FedNow® payment processing services and developing instant payments applications. The Fed reports that some use cases, both consumer- and business- facing and representing a range of micro to high value transaction types, have gained momentum in the first year. Digital wallets, instant payroll, bill pay, and microdeposit account verification are just a few of the use cases that have found an early footing in the market.
As the Fed announces its next steps for the service, which will include the development of service resources and tools for FedNow® participants as well as new risk management features, EasCorp and Vertifi look to our own instant payment roadmap. We will continue to apply our industry expertise, including our extensive expertise in liquidity management, settlement, payment risk mitigation, and payment processing, to the continued development of our instant payments settlement solution and our instant payments gateway.