On July 21, 2017 the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force (“Task Force”) released the Faster Payments Task Force Final Report Part Two (“Final Report”). The Final Report is a follow-up to Part One of the Faster Payments Task Force Final Report, which was published in January 2017 and provided an overview of the Task Force’s objectives and a description of the payments landscape. The Final Report summarizes the specific faster payments solution proposals submitted to and analyzed by the Task Force, as well as the Task Force’s goals and recommendations for developing an ecosystem that is conducive to the development of faster payments solutions, with an ultimate goal of developing a payments system that is faster, ubiquitous, and secure by 2020. The work of the Secure Payments Task Force, the other arm of the Federal Reserve’s Payments System Improvement initiative, remains ongoing.

BACKGROUND -

In June 2015, the Federal Reserve convened the Task Force, comprised of representatives across the payments community, such as financial institutions, consumer groups, federal and state government agencies, fintech companies, and payment service providers, to review the U.S. payments system and identify approaches to making payments in the U.S. faster. The Task Force established a set of effectiveness criteria with six categories—(1) speed, (2) efficiency, (3) ubiquity, (4) safety and security, (5) legal, and (6) governance. The Task Force solicited proposals for faster payments solutions that met the effectiveness criteria, which were independently assessed by an outside consulting company and then presented to the Task Force.