The Clearing House Association

The central bank aims to roll out FedNow sometime in 2023, which is more optimistic than its previous timetable. The official leading the project noted progress in developing the infrastructure and its compatibility with private-sector solutions.

A California startup and a century-old Missouri bank, which began using The ClearingHouse's real-time payments network this summer, say businesses have embraced the technology to pay suppliers and gig-economy workers and quickly close real estate deals.

Two smaller banks with strikingly different roots — a startup financial institution in Irvine, Calif., and a century-old Missouri-based bank — are seeing similar trends emerge around demand for real-time payments.

The central bank must engage core processors, community banks and The Clearing House if it wants to move quickly on building out its FedNow system.

The central bank must engage core processors, community banks and The Clearing House if it wants to move quickly on building out its FedNow system.

For real-time payments to become a standard in U.S. billing and payment processing, businesses have to want what providers are developing. And that acceptance, or the interest in having an RTP option, is on the rise.

The past few months have provided no shortage of crises that call out for faster access to funds, giving developers a new impetus to hasten transaction processing.

Mobile and contactless payments have generated more consumer attention as ways to safely move money during the coronavirus pandemic, but there's also a growing wave of support for The Clearing House's Real Time Payments network for banks.

Ken Montgomery, who is heading up the Federal Reserve's faster payments network, says the agency is taking an incremental approach to launching the service.

To address immediate market demand but allow time for the project to be done right, the official leading implementation of FedNow says the central bank envisions an initial release in 2023 or 2024 followed by subsequent updates.