I'm so excited for this. It'll be nice to get away from cash app, iMessage cash, Venmo, etc. It'll also be nice to pay bills and see that reflected in bank balance immediately instead of in 3 days.

What's the process for a transfer? How do you "address" your recipient to send funds?

It will be an alias such as an email or phone number:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federa...

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/11/2020-17...

(Control-F alias on both pages)

I think you’re a bit confused. FedNow is not consumer facing, you need an account at the Fed to use it.

Are you sure?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

My understanding is that FedNow is the protocol layer. Interested financial institutions will use FedNow to build their own customer-facing applications, and they will be interoperable with each other.

This means you don't need Zelle, Venmo, Cash app, etc. You can simply use your bank's implementation of FedNow, to easily send money to any other user in the system.

That is a fantastic step forward. Several other countries have implemented country-wide instant payment platforms (e.g. Pix in Brazil [1]), but the US was still lagging behind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

Is this an attempt to collect taxes on business transactions that currently some are not being reporting with Venmo, etc.?

It’s instant payment infra that can replace ACH, some wire volume, and some credit card volume. You can move up to $100k in value for pennies (but probably free, depending on your financial services provider).

Think Zelle for every US demand deposit account, with the network run by the US Federal Reserve. No more need for Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, etc.

Nothing about "FedNow" is targeted at individuals. It's for financial institutions.

It is infrastructure for banks to provide instant payments to banking customers if you want to be pedantic.

https://www.frbservices.org/binaries/content/assets/crsocms/...

> The FedNow Service will facilitate end-to-end instant payment services for consumers and businesses, increase competition, and ensure equitable access to banks of all sizes nationwide.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federa...

Right, banks are financial institutions. You and I are not.

No, but you're probably a customer. Not sure why you just cherry picked that, but it most certainly will benefit individuals.

The private sector has had ample time and ability to implement a ubiquitous real-time settlement system, and it has not. I'd consider this money well spent.

as long as you're spending others money, of course it seems well spent

I hadn’t visited in a few years and was shocked to see how ubiquitous Pix has become! People use it to pay at stores and restaurants. And even before Pix, domestic bank transfers were already instantaneous.