Companies

Research Study Examines Feasibility of Theoretical Payments System Designed to Facilitate and Settle Digital Asset Transactions

New York Fed

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's New York Innovation Center (NYIC), in collaboration with members of the U.S. financial services sector, published the findings of a proof of concept (PoC) that explored the feasibility of an interoperable network for wholesale payments operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Announcing Organizations Certified as Ready for the FedNow® Service

Federal Reserve

"On June 29, 2023, the Federal Reserve announced that 57 early adopter organizations, including financial institutions and service providers, had completed formal testing and certification on the FedNow Service in advance of its launch in late July. Many of these organizations will be live when the FedNow Service launches or shortly after, with financial institutions ready to send and receive transactions and service providers ready to support transaction activity."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

The 2022 Federal Reserve Payments Study in Four Charts

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"Today, the numbers can do the talking about noncash payments in 2021. The chart below shows the value of noncash payments from the first measurement year of the Federal Reserve Payments Study, 2000, to the latest, 2021."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

FedNow Launch is Just Weeks Away: Is Finance Ready to Process More Real-Time Payments?

Resourceful Finance Pro

"Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. has lagged behind in rapid B2B payments technology, but that’s about to change. The Federal Reserve’s FedNow service is coming soon!"

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Federal Reserve Board Publishes a Database of Financial Institutions with Access to, or Requests to Access, Federal Reserve Bank Master Accounts and Services

Federal Reserve

"To promote transparency, the Federal Reserve Board on Friday published a database of financial institutions with access to, or requests to access, Federal Reserve Bank master accounts and services. The database is consistent with the requirements set forth in legislation enacted last year and will be updated on a quarterly basis."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

B2B Payments Experts Launch Digital Business Networks Alliance

FedPayments Improvement

"The Business Payments Coalition (BPC) and Federal Reserve Financial Services have been working to improve the efficiency of how supporting information for business-to-business (B2B) payments is delivered and processed."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Agencies Issue Final Guidance on Third-Party Risk Management

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

"Federal bank regulatory agencies today issued final joint guidance designed to help banking organizations manage risks associated with third-party relationships, including relationships with financial technology companies."

Tags: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Federal Reserve Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Companies

XRP Acknowledged by Atlanta Fed Reserve Bank for International Payments

TronWeekly

"The Atlanta branch of the United States Federal Reserve Bank recently brought focus to Ripple’s operational framework and its utilization of XRP to fulfill requirements for cross-border settlements. As per the Reserve Bank, XRP is regarded as a “global payment medium.”"

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Federal Reserve Surveys: U.S. Businesses, Consumers Want Faster Payment Options to Help Navigate Evolving Needs

Business Wire

"Facing a dynamic and increasingly on-demand, online environment, a majority of businesses (83%) and consumers (75%) are already using faster payments, and most (66% of businesses and 61% of consumers) say they are likely to use faster payments more often in the future, according to new studies released today by the Federal Reserve."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

New York Fed and Monetary Authority of Singapore Publish Results of Joint Wholesale Cross-Border Payments Research Study

New York Fed

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s New York Innovation Center (NYIC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today published a research report detailing the results of the joint Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+ (Cedar x Ubin+) experiment. The Cedar x Ubin+ experiment examined whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) could be used to improve the efficiency of cross-border wholesale payments and settlements involving multiple currencies."

Tags: Federal Reserve Monetary Authority of Singapore

Companies

FedNowSM Service Illustration Video

FedNow

"Watch an example of how financial institutions can enable their customers to access instant payments through the FedNow Service. In this video, you’ll see a business customer immediately pay a supplier using their financial institution’s online interface. You’ll also get a look at what’s happening between the sender’s and receiver’s financial institutions when a payment is made over the service."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

FedNowSM Service Technical Overview and Planning Guide

FedNowSM

"The FedNow Service is an interbank, 24x7x365 real-time gross settlement service with integrated clearing functionality. This resource, designed to help financial institutions make decisions about adopting the service, provides an overview of the technical aspects of the service and related considerations."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Federal Reserve Board Announces the Results From the Review of the Supervision and Regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, Led by Vice Chair for Supervision Barr

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

"The Federal Reserve Board on Friday announced the results from the review of the supervision and regulation of Silicon Valley Bank, led by Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr. The review finds four key takeaways on the causes of the bank's failure..."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Payments Study Reports Unprecedented Growth in ACH Payments Value

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"Late last week, the Federal Reserve Payments Study (FRPS) announced unprecedented growth in the dollar value of ACH (automated clearing house) payments from 2018 to 2021: 12.7 percent per year. This is the highest rate of growth by value for ACH over all the years for the FRPS."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

The Federal Reserve Payments Study: 2022 Triennial Initial Data Release

Federal Reserve

"The 2022 Federal Reserve Payments Study (FRPS) collected data for the 2021 calendar year. This initial release includes top-line figures for the core noncash payment methods used in the United States by consumers, businesses, and governments, including payments by general-purpose and private-label cards, automated clearinghouse (ACH) transfers, and checks. This release also covers automated teller machine (ATM) cash withdrawals. Wire transfers, used primarily for large financial transactions, are excluded from these data."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Fighting First-Party Fraud

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"Over the past three years, the rate of first-party fraud, also called friendly fraud, in the United States has risen dramatically, especially with online transactions. Unscrupulous cardholders are leveraging the favorable cardholder dispute resolution rules to get their goods or services for free. One vendor specializing in helping merchants with card disputes claims that at least 60 percent of all chargebacks stem from first-party fraud. The major growth in the overall share of online purchases has made investigations of claims more difficult, but the industry is working on ways to battle these fraudulent chargebacks."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

The Fed is Restructuring the US Payments Ecosystem with the FedNow Service – What FIs Need to Know

Tearsheet

"The Federal Reserve’s long-awaited digital payments system, FedNow, will be deployed in phases, with the initial launch planned for July 2023. FedNow is the first government-created system in the US for financial institutions to send and receive funds in near real-time online, with the primary goals of providing immediate access to funds and offering real-time and accurate views of account balances. FedNow promises to enable smoother operations by ensuring instant payment capabilities without any delays of a few business days, or during holidays or weekends. In addition to money transfers, the system will allow bill payments and other consumer activities to move more rapidly -- decreasing transfer time from several days to just a few seconds -- and at a lower cost."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

The Ransomware Battleground in 2022

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"The Retail Payments Risk Forum team has been writing a lot about ransomware in Take on Payments since 2018, when criminals shifted their targets from consumers with small ransom payouts to large government entities, educational institutions, and healthcare industries with their deeper pockets. Some of the initial victims in the United States were the cities of Atlanta and Baltimore and Florida's Monroe County School District. As with consumer attacks, criminals get to the bigger targets primarily by using phishing or smishing messages to obtain account credentials. They then exploit known software security gaps and make brute force attacks."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Federal Reserve Announces July Launch for the FedNow Service

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

"The Federal Reserve announced that the FedNow Service will start operating in July and provided details on preparations for launch. The first week of April, the Federal Reserve will begin the formal certification of participants for launch of the service. Early adopters will complete a customer testing and certification program, informed by feedback from the FedNow Pilot Program, to prepare for sending live transactions through the system."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

The Federal Reserve Announces July Launch for the FedNowSM Service

FedNow

"The Federal Reserve announced that the FedNow Service will start operating in July and provided details on preparations for launch. The first week of April, the Federal Reserve will begin the formal certification of participants for launch of the service. Early adopters will complete a customer testing and certification program, informed by feedback from the FedNow Pilot Program, to prepare for sending live transactions through the system."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Tassat Blockchain to Join FedNow Service with B2B On-Ramp as Pilot Prepares for Launch

Cointelegraph

Blockchain operator Tassat announced on March 14 that it would provide access to the United States Federal Reserve’s FedNow payment system. FedNow, which will launch as a pilot project later this year, will provide real-time, round-the-clock payment service. Tassat will serve as a business-to-business on-ramp for FedNow through a client-facing application programming interface, CEO Kevin Greene told Cointelegraph. Both the company’s interbank and intrabank services will provide FedNow access. The FedNow pilot is expected to begin in June or July with a small number of banks.

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Federal Reserve Board Announces Denial of Application by Custodia Bank, Inc. to Become a Member of the Federal Reserve System

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve Board on Friday announced its denial of the application by Custodia Bank, Inc., Cheyenne, Wyoming, to become a member of the Federal Reserve System. The Board has concluded that the firm's application as submitted is inconsistent with the required factors under the law.

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Who Pays For Your Rewards? Redistribution in the Credit Card Market

Federal Reserve

We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers. To probe the underlying mechanisms, we exploit bank-initiated account limit increases at the card level and show that reward cards induce more spending, leaving naive consumers with higher unpaid balances. Naive consumers also follow a sub-optimal balance-matching heuristic when repaying their credit cards, incurring higher costs....

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation

Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve, as the nation’s central bank, works to maintain the public’s confidence by fostering monetary stability, financial stability, and a safe and efficient payment system. This paper is the first step in a public discussion between the Federal Reserve and stakeholders about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). For the purpose of this paper, a CBDC is defined as a digital liability of a central bank that is widely available to the general public.

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Open Banking's Slow March Advances

Atlanta Fed

"In June, I wrote about the revived and deliberate process of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in developing rules covering the implementation of open banking in the United States. I promised that the Retail Payments Risk Forum would continue to follow developments in open banking, so in this post, I'm providing a small update. In an October 25 speech at this year's Money20/20 conference, CFPB director Rohit Chopra delivered a detailed roadmap and timeline for the rulemaking process for open banking."

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Boston Fed, MIT Complete Research Project into Feasibility of a Central Bank Digital Currency

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

“A joint research effort between the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology into the technical feasibility of a potential central bank digital currency is now complete. The Boston Fed’s work on CBDC with MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative is known as Project Hamilton. Boston Fed Executive Vice President Jim Cunha said the now-concluded project was “agnostic” from the start about any future policy decisions regarding new technologies and U.S. currency.”

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies Global

Why the Fed Needs to Take the Digital Yuan Seriously

Bloomberg

“If the Federal Reserve still wants proof of China’s intention to challenge the dollar’s hegemony, it should look no further than a small experiment currently under way in Hong Kong. Last week, Bank of China (Hong Kong), one of the city’s big deposit-taking institutions, had its offer of 500 trial accounts tied to the e-CNY, the electronic version of official Chinese money, snapped up in two days. The customers are each being gifted 100 yuan in digital form, which they can spend at mainland stores, the JD.com website or a supermarket chain in Hong Kong.  (Subscription required)”

Tags: China Federal Reserve Hong Kong

Companies

Industry Working Group to Establish Principles for FedNowSM Service Request for Payment Solutions

FedNow

“In preparation for the mid-2023 FedNow Service launch, the Federal Reserve has formed an industry working group to establish voluntary principles for a consistent end-customer experience for solutions leveraging FedNow Service request for payment (RFP) functionality, and to consider other practices or standards that may be useful to encourage broad adoption of RFP functionality across the industry. RFP will be one of the key features of the FedNow Service. It will allow financial institutions and service providers to build bill pay solutions that can help consumers and businesses conveniently send invoices, receive instant bill payments and better manage cash flow. The working group, composed of nearly 100 FedNow Community members (PDF) , will meet monthly between Q4 2022 and the second half of 2023 to outline recommended payer and payee experiences for business and consumers, and provide input on practices for the Federal Reserve to consider. The working group will also produce an “RFP Customer Experience” document that will be publicly available.”

Tags: Federal Reserve

Companies

Real-Time Payments In U.S. Marks Fifth Year — FedNow Coming In July

“To mark the fifth anniversary of real-time payments in the U.S. The Clearing House (TCH) and Jack Henry launched a flurry of statistics which cast a bit of an obscuring haze over the topic.   TCH says its RTP network reaches 62% of all demand deposit accounts in the U.S. and 85% of insured depository institutions have technical access to the network through more than 20 technology solutions providers, including Jack Henry & Associates, FIS, Fiserv, COCC, Finastra and Shazam. The Clearing House is eager to show that it provides services for small banks and credit unions and isn’t just a network for the major banks.”

Tags: Federal Reserve FIS Fiserv Jack Henry & Associates The Clearing House (TCH)

Companies

New York Fed Completes Pilot For Cross-border CBDC Transactions

Blockonomi

“Central banks around the world have made massive investments into CBDC’s research. The FED, despite lagging behind other peers in the race, has sharply ramped up efforts to issue its CBDC in recent times. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has completed a successful pilot of the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for wholesale, cross-border transactions. The experiment, also known as Project Cedar: Phase One, aims to explore the capabilities of blockchain technology in payment delivery and the application of CBDC in wholesale payments. Conducted on separate blockchains to explore the capabilities of blockchain technology in delivering fast and safe payments for a lower settlement cost, the FED is now taking blockchain seriously.”

Tags: Federal Reserve