March 28, 2023 – The Clearing House launched RTP, the first real-time account-to-account payment rail in the U.S., in 2017. A few years later, the Federal Reserve entered the landscape by announcing the development of FedNow. The move was unexpected, but the Fed held town halls and comment periods to ensure it would develop the solution with business and financial community input and provide the intended value to the market. FedNow is due to be released later in 2023.

This report defines key concepts, discusses how to frame the technology decisions, highlights the technical areas that must be considered when deploying FedNow, and recommends best practices. It is based on Aite-Novarica Group research from 2021 to 2023, the Federal Government’s FedNow Service Readiness Guide, and external articles on the topic.

Clients of Aite-Novarica Group’s Community Banking service can download this report.

This report mentions IBM, Splunk, The Clearing House, and Zelle.