Fed's Faster Payments Council to focus on real-world implementation

The recently formed U.S. Faster Payments Council is the Federal Reserve Bank's latest bid to improve speed, security, efficiency, cross-border compatibility and collaboration in payments. Developed by the Fed's Governance Framework Formation Team (GFFT), the FPC is open to all payments industry stakeholders, who are invited to serve on committees and work groups and have a voice in the direction of the project, FPC members stated.

Sean Rodriguez, Federal Reserve executive vice president and Faster Payments strategy leader called the FPC an important next step in U.S. payment system evolution, stating, "We commend the GFFT's efforts to come together and embrace the need for a new organization that will help facilitate efforts to modernize our country's payments system and allow everyone – providers, consumers, businesses, and more – to benefit from faster payments."

Douglas Berg, senior vice president of payment industry relations at Wells Fargo Bank, added, "The industry has clearly signaled that, while our nation's faster payments system capabilities are rapidly innovating, there's much to be done to promote ubiquity and faster payments adoption. We encourage our nation's payments leaders to lend their voices to the future of faster payments by joining the FPC and sharing their insights and expertise to further this important work."

Guiding principles

FPC founding members, which include Mastercard, Visa, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase Bank and Early Warning Services, invite payments industry stakeholders to participate in the faster payments initiative, which will focus on the following guiding principles:

• Supporting adoption of practices that enhance safety and security for service providers and users of faster payments.

• Identifying, developing and supporting principles, guidelines and market practices that will address opportunities and emerging issues in an open and collaborative way.

• Developing an education and awareness program to foster better understanding of faster payments.

"The FPC's mission is to provide a unique forum for all stakeholders to come together and discuss strategies for developing a faster payments infrastructure that will shape the future of payments in the United States," said Andrea Gilman, senior vice president, product management at Mastercard. "I encourage all of our customers and partners to participate in this important dialogue."

Work-in-progress

The Fed has made significant progress with faster payments since publishing its January 2015 call-to-action, titled Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payment System. Since then, diversified payments stakeholders have collaborated to facilitate safe, secure payments to anyone, anywhere, at any time, with near-immediate funds availability.

A September 2017 progress report, Next Steps in the Payments Improvement Journey, detailed the initiative's accomplishments and near-term challenges. Report authors referenced the Secure Payments Task Force, launched in June 2015, which has worked with the Faster Payments Task Force on approaches to faster payments that are both fast and secure.

The ultimate goal is to create "U.S. payment system security that remains very strong, with public confidence that remains high and protections and incident response that keeps pace with the rapidly evolving and expanding threat environment," the authors wrote.

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