Central Banking

FedNow – at last

The instant payment system might help fix the US’s rusty payment rails, but it also faces competition, says Dave Birch

FedNow

Many years ago I was told that there were three fundamental problems with the payments industry: payments were too slow; too expensive; and too opaque. Well, the US now has FedNow, the equivalent of the instant payment infrastructure common in many other countries, and the good news is that it has the potential to attack all three of those problems.

Rusty rails

The Economist rather kindly commented on the US’s payment infrastructure recently, saying that it was perhaps “overdue a spot of

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