Faster payments

PayPal's new Funds Now service should be the norm, according to the company, which will provide immediate funds access to small businesses in good standing.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication says a pre-validation system it will launch soon to catch payment message mistakes prior to dispatch should increase the number of payments reaching beneficiaries in less than 30 seconds.

Giro Zrt, a Hungarian financial services industry organization that operates a domestic automated clearing house payments network, is teaming with the payments service provider Nets A/S to create a national instant payments service.

While there are automated reconciliation and straight-through processing (STP) solutions for large businesses, small businesses, in particular, continue to be underserved due to their smaller and less frequent invoices, contends Blair Jeffery, COO of Noventis.

About half of Swift Global Payments Innovation transactions are credited within 30 minutes and many within seconds.

The advent of Faster Payments services plus Europe’s PSD2 have heightened concerns among banks about increased fraud risks. This has created opportunities for firms such as New York/Israel’s BioCatch and San Francisco’s BehavioSec, both of which develop technology around behavioral biometrics analysis.

Debit push payments proved an essential component of the ride-sharing boom, with many drivers opting to pay a fee for immediate funds throughout the day to cover fuel and other expenses. And the technology is finding fans in other niches as well.

Risk management and payments technology provider linked2pay says paycosmos has become the first independent sales organization to offer its merchants the Instant Merchant Settlements service.

One expert says the U.S. lags behind other countries, but changes are coming soon – and fast.

The biggest Nordic banks expect to launch a new piece of financial infrastructure next year, promising to dramatically speed up international transfers in one of the world’s most technologically advanced regions.

The quest for fast payments is advancing on the consumer side, but most banks are said to be undecided about a host of issues tied to speeding up transactions between businesses.

U.K. payments technology provider Paysafe has entered a partnership with Company.com and Ingo Money to offer same-day settlement to small business merchants in the U.S.

The move from standard to real-time transactions adds another layer of complexity and creates further opportunities for fraudsters. Quicker transaction times increase the chances of fraudulent transactions going undetected, writes David Worthington, vice president of payments at Rambus.

Beem It, a startup owned by three of Australia’s largest banks, has launched a free real-time social payments app designed to run on older debit networks instead of the country's new faster payments platform.

Mastercard is working with Starling Bank as its strategic partner to settle funds sent within the U.K. through its Mastercard Send service.

Intuit has added new features to QuickBooks Payroll so employers can make payroll at the last minute, delivering same-day paychecks to workers with the option to make direct deposits to contract employees.

The companies have built a product that attempts to beat the current standard of next or same day settlement.

The expansion of Visa Direct is designed to speed disbursements for health care patients who can receive an instant payment versus waiting several days to a week for payout.

Payment system change in the United States has always benefited from a consensus-driven approach that incorporates the views and behaviors of many, financial institutions, payment processors, technology providers, merchants, regulators, consumer advocates and others, writes Michael Bilski, CEO of North American Banking Company.

Australia is the latest country to enable Faster Payments with the February 2018 launch of the New Payments Platform. It's 10 years behind the U.K.'s version, but benefits from a decade of experience and observation.