US: payments system agenda stresses infrastructure developments

The central bank also announced plans to create several industry task forces that will provide input on the process of speeding up transactions, americanbanker.com reports.

Dan Gonzalez, vice president of industry engagement at Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has informed that the central bank will focus on building a faster payments option for a subset of transactions that could benefit substantially from real-time processing to approximately 10-12% of all US payments. Gonzalez emphasized that the roadmap will not mandate changes to the current payment system, but will work to achieve them through collaborative industry engagement.

To that end, the Federal Reserve’ roadmap will call for the creation of a faster payments council, a payments security council and a US payment strategy advisory council. It will select council members from pools of industry candidates who submit their names during an open application process, Gonzalez said. These groups will set the discussions about the process of implementing new payment systems and practices.

The bank also plans to take a closer look at adopting an international payments format called ISO 20022 that is already in use by countries including India, China and Russia. The roadmap will also encourage the industry to update security standards and practices across different payment channels, from credit and debit cards to newer options including mobile wallets, reloadable cards, money transfer services and virtual currencies.

The roadmap will also discuss the Reserve’s plans to facilitate cheaper and faster cross-border payments. The agency may expand from providing only domestic wire transfer services to offering those services internationally.

The Reserve is also considering expanding the reach of its international ACH service, which it currently provides to 35 countries.