Introducing the US Faster Payments Council

The Federal Reserve, following through on plans disclosed earlier this year, formally unveiled the U.S. Faster Payments Council, an industry group charged with collaborating to spur the adoption of faster payments and identify market opportunities.

The 22 inaugural members range from retailing giant Walmart Inc. to Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to some big banks, tech companies, processors, and automated clearing house governing body NACHA. The faster payments effort aims to clear and settle payments in near real time.

The council, an outgrowth of the Fed’s multiyear Payment System Improvement project and the successor to that project’s Governance Framework Formation Team, will focus on private-sector approaches “to solving problems and addressing issues that inhibit adoption of faster payments,” the Fed said in a news release.

The U.S. After Payments Council is an outgrowth of the Fed’s multiyear Payment System Improvement project and the successor to that project’s Governance Framework Formation Team. It promises to focus on private-sector approaches “to solving problems and addressing issues that inhibit adoption of faster payments.”

PYMNTS.COM quotes Douglas Berg, senior vice president of payment industry relations for Wells Fargo, from a press release announcing the formation of the latest Faster Payments Council:

“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.”

The FPC identifies paper as one of the roadblocks to implementing faster payments adoption. Checks are still popular because of – you guessed it – fraud anxieties, for one, according to PYMNTS Real-Time Payments Innovation Playbook.

We applaud the industry for taking aggressive steps to move in this direction, particularly as a market-driven initiative. As the adoption curve develops, we’ll continue to focus on improving the automation levels as well as fraud and compliance controls of today’s proven check payments.

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