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| ▲ | smnrchrds 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Has FedNow had any visible effect in the US? Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously? | | |
| ▲ | toast0 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My credit unions now offer ach, same day ach, and instant transfers between them. Same day ach launched with a user fee, so they usually prompt to confirm and offer to send it via normal ach instead, which I find amusing? I also see instant transfer support at some other places I bank. I can't say if bill payment happens instantly or not, my finances don't run close to the edge, and I don't need to know exactly when a bill pay (which I generally schedule) is taken out and when it's applied; as long as both happen, I'm good. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | ~$800B/year in annual volume run rate, as of this comment. You can move up to $10M per value message for less than 5 cents, with a max 20 second time to completion SLA. https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/fed... (i am contributing subject matter expertise to policymakers to make offering FedNow rails to financial services customers a requirement of having a banking license, so I'm a bit biased; this is the only way we'll get off of closed payment rails like Zelle, slow open rails like ACH, or expensive faster legacy credit card rails) > Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously? Walmart is currently rolling it out. I expect others to start to as you see them surcharge credit card payments (US mobile phone providers, internet providers, etc). It's trivial to build into an app experience, with or without a partner like Plaid (for example). > “It surprised me,” Henry said of adoption of Walmart’s first iteration of pay-by-bank, which is available online but hasn’t been marketed to customers. “It’s certainly surpassed our expectations of the amount of customers that have registered and actually use the payment type.” > Walmart’s upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow. Walmart Plans Instant Bank Payments, Cutting Out Card Networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593450 - September 2024 (3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632105 (additional citations) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433164 (additional citations) | | |
| ▲ | smnrchrds 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Has this lead to any user-visible changes? Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier, not having to worry about it arriving on time? | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The most visible change I've seen is that I can move funds instantly between my credit union (which I maintain solely for Zelle access at this time in my financial system) and Wise, for free, others would have to chime in for more pireps/ground truth on this which apps are getting this value in front of users. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow-servic... maintains a list of banks and financial service providers currently on FedNow rails. | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier For at least ten years now. You should visit America. It's nice. | | |
| ▲ | smnrchrds 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I have. It is indeed nice. I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure though during my visits. I read Bank of America website though, and it recommends sending bill payments 5 business days before the due date. Are they incorrect? > How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller? > We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account. https://info.bankofamerica.com/en/digital-banking/online-bil... | | |
| ▲ | xp84 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Checking account "Bill Pay" features are a fusion of multiple ideas that you access through a single interface. Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check. Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment). But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases. So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile. In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close. | |
| ▲ | happyopossum 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is likely there to allow for billers that don't accept electronic transfers. In those cases, BofA will write and mail a paper check. | |
| ▲ | rootusrootus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's pretty general advice, and probably the safe choice, but anecdotally all of my bill pay ACH transactions these days are executed on the due date. The only exception is if the due date is a weekend, in which case it executes on the preceding business day. It takes usually one day, maximum two before it actually shows up as a withdrawal in the source account, but my payees all recognize the credit on the day of execution. | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's the worst-case-scenario guidance. Bank of America will print and mail a check if it can't find an electronic method. I have a client who sends me his monthly payment this way. If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate. As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure." Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about. | | |
| ▲ | smnrchrds 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't comment; I asked a question. You are upset that I asked whether bill payments are instant? |
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| ▲ | dghlsakjg 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Behind the scenes the money doesn't actually move day of. The people that accept payments are doing you a favor and crediting you before the funds settle. If you pay a bill on the 1st, the money does not land in the payees account that day (barring in person cash transactions). Best case scenario, funds are available on the 2nd to the payee, although, more commonly, it is several days before the funds are settled. Banks will frequently paper over this showing the funds where they will eventually go, but the clearing house still hasn't finished. If you try to spend too much of that unsettled money, the bank will be glad to inform you that the money isn't actually available yet. When people talk about instant payments they mean a few seconds, not overnight -maybe. I used to be in charge of a payments dev team that oversaw several billion dollars of bill payments per year. There is nothing instant about moving money in the US. | |
| ▲ | creaturemachine 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Two more years until you're off the blacklist. |
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| ▲ | dcrazy 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is ~800B a lot? It doesn’t sound like a lot in the context of the U.S. economy. | | |
| ▲ | dghlsakjg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Considering that Zelle is largely marketed for p2p and not as a general all-purpose payment mechanism, you need to compare it to Venmo or Square. For reference Venmo is on track for ~$400 billion this year. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Draw your attention to YoY upward volume trajectory in my first citation in the comment you replied to. It is still "warming up." TAM is all existing check, ACH, Zelle, and credit card volume. Takes time for folks to get the warm fuzzies and migrate to new systems. The faster merchants offer instant payments for making payments for free and surcharge credit card rails for payments (to cover the exorbitant cost), the faster volume moves over (imho). Brazil's Pix (https://whatispix.com/) is what desired target end state looks like imho. Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052371 - May 2026 (383 comments) |
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| ▲ | mmooss 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for contributing some actual expertise! What are the provisions for privacy - preventing my every financial transaction, and thus everything I do involving money, from being centrally tracked, and shared with private institutions? And what about for preventing government from cutting people off from the financial system (without a court order)? Edit: The US government already commonly does it with non-citizens in the context of other financial systems. At least, how does that work with FedNow if not Canada's RTR? EDIT: (clarified and reorganized) | | |
| ▲ | glitchc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Disclaimer: IANAL Access to your personal information is governed by PIPEDA for private entities and the Privacy Act for government entities. Additionally each province has its own version of the Privacy Act. Since most of the big banks are headquartered in Toronto, the Ontario's Privacy Act (FIPPA) may also have some jurisdiction but not clear. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country an instant payment system operates in. I don't have those specifics per country. The government can cut you off as easily as Binance asking other platforms to block transactions when called upon, for example. If you don't want to be blocked, use cash or other bearer instruments. Every other traditional finance or crypto ecosystem has a throat to choke. Show me the financial services consumer persona and use cases and I'll walk through the attack path to cut their access to the financial system, as someone who has contributed to building financial infrastructure both in traditional finance, capital markets, and crypto rails for traditional folks. | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks. > That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country I want to add that it can also be built in on a technical level. Some cryptocurrency already does it (I'm not advocating unregulated monetary systems or blockchain technology, I'm just saying it's possible and already done). For example, transactions could be anonymized, with PKI-type keys available only with a court order. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It can be built, it won't be built. There is no material demand or incentive to require building it. Crypto primitives, in this context, are just ceremony on top of legal systems. "You are trying to solve a people and politics problem with technology." https://xkcd.com/538/ | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sadly, I could imagine it won't be built, or not soon, but things do change; people make change. I think govermnment and tech leaders greatly underestimate demand for privacy (confidentiality). People in polls consistently say they are worried about government and corporate surveillance and want privacy; you can see the response to Flock cameras right now. Apple, the most successful computer company, clearly sees demand for it, devotes extensive engineering to it, and markets products on that basis. People in other places (e.g., the EU) have passed laws with much greater privacy protection. The public doesn't understand what's happening - how they are tracked (e.g., all electronic monetary transactions) and what the power/impact of that surveillance is - and they are givin no path forward but to submit. When they have a path (again, Flock, Apple, other countries), they take it. They need tech people to take the lead, educate people in plain English (not 'PKI', etc.), and develop options technical and political - politicians generally are non-technical too. The solutions require both legal and technical components. With no technical limitation - if data is open on the laptops of everyone in the legal / finance / national security communities - the legal constraints won't work; people will use the data anyway. If there is no legal restriction, they'll obtain access anyway. | | |
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| ▲ | adamdecaf 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > “Canada is the first G7 country to deploy a real-time payment system with mandatory centralized fraud services for use at launch.” Looks like everything will pass through a single clear text layer managed by the Canadian Government. |
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