In early 2015, the Federal Reserve issued Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payment System (Strategies paper) which outlined the collective thinking of U.S. payment system stakeholders and the Federal Reserve on desired outcomes for improving the U.S. payment system.The desired outcomes focused on speed, security, efficiency, cross border payments, and industry collaboration.
The Strategies paper called upon payment system stakeholders—including financial institutions, non-bank providers, businesses, retailers, consumer groups, standards bodies, and other organizations involved in making, receiving, and processing payments—to form two task forces: the Faster Payments Task Force and the Secure Payments Task Force. Acting primarily as a catalyst, the Federal Reserve has encouraged and supported payment stakeholders in coming together in a collaborative effort to progress toward payment improvements in a complex economic environment.
The Faster Payments Task Force (‘task force”) was convened by the Federal Reserve in May of 2015. The task force has focused on identifying goals and attributes of effective faster payment systems; proposing solutions and assessing their capability to achieve those goals; and championing the payment industry to take steps toward implementation and adoption of faster payments capabilities.
Its mission :
“A ubiquitous, safe, faster electronic solution(s) for making a broad variety of business and personal payments, supported by a flexible and cost-effective means for payment clearing and settlement groups to settle their positions rapidly and with finality”.
To accomplish this mission, the task force set out to achieve several important objectives:
- Represent diverse stakeholder views on future needs for safe, ubiquitous faster payments solutions.
- Assess alternative approaches for faster payments capabilities.
- Address other issues that arise through task force discussion that are deemed important to the successful development of effective approaches for implementing faster payment capabilities.