Why Banks Should Welcome Faster Payments

The large U.S. banks are being shortsighted when they protest that upgrading the payments system, as the Federal Reserve wants them to do, will require short-term as well as long-term payoffs, argues consultant Dave Birch. Banks in other countries have benefitted greatly from modernization projects, he says, pointing to the examples of M-Pesa in Kenya and Faster Payments in the U.K.