Finastra joins the FedNow Pilot Program for US instant payments

By Sunniva Kolostyak

Finastra has announced that it has joined the US Federal Reserve’s FedNow Pilot Program to support the development, testing and adoption of the instant payments project.

Finastra joins more than 110 other banks, credit unions and payments technology organisations – including Temenos – in the FedNow Community to help shape the future of payments and develop use cases that leverage FedNow functionality.

The pilot program is designed to support growth, testing and adoption of the FedNow Service, the upcoming instant payments offering, and to encourage the development of services and use cases that leverage its functionality.

Through participating organisations, businesses and individuals will be able to send and receive instant payments conveniently, and recipients will have full access to funds within seconds, providing greater flexibility to manage money and make time-sensitive payments. Access will be provided through the Federal Reserve’s FedLine® network, which serves more than 10,000 financial institutions.

A key objective in selecting participants for the pilot was to ensure diverse representation across financial institutions and service providers, connection types, settlement arrangements and experience levels.

As a part of the FedNow Pilot Program, Finastra will help shape and provide input into the service and adoption roadmap, industry preparation, and overall instant payments strategy. Pilot firms will also have the opportunity to work with the FedNow Service prior to general availability.

Commenting Ohad Chenkin, Vice President, Product Management, Payments Product and Platform at Finastra, said: “Finastra has deep expertise and knowledge of instant payment schemes globally, having enabled financial institutions to process payments and implement associated overlay services for instant payment schemes in 12 countries across four continents.”

“We look forward to bringing our knowledge and experience to the FedNow Pilot program and to help advance instant payments in the United States,” Chenkin said.

Finastra’s payment solutions provide financial institutions with the tools to meet the challenges of new technologies and innovations in the payments space, including immediate/real-time payment schemes, open APIs, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. With a broad suite of integrated solutions for financial institutions ranging from the world’s largest banks to community banks and credit unions, Finastra provides the technology platform to take payments systems forward on a road to modernisation.