WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve is looking for financial institutions – including credit unions, service providers, and payment processors– to participate in its FedNow Pilot Program to support the development, testing, and adoption of the FedNow Service – the Fed's real-time payments system.
The Fed is currently accepting participant applications from members of the FedNow Community; interested organizations that are not currently a member of the community can enroll by submitting this participant profile form. The application to participate in the pilot program is available here; the deadline is Nov. 16.
In addition, the Fed indicated organizations that are not selected will have opportunities to provide input into the FedNow Service through their participation in FedNow Community roundtables, working groups and surveys, and may elect to become an early user of the service upon general availability. Additional participants may be added to later phases of the pilot.
Three Phases
The pilot program will include three phases – advisory, testing, and closed-loop production – during which pilot participants could be asked to participate in discussions or demos, test the service, engage service providers or users, and conduct other activities as needed, NAFCU said.
The Fed said the pilot program will provide participating financial institutions:
- Opportunities to help shape service features, the user experience, onboarding and support processes, and future product releases
- Inclusion in select FedNow press releases, web articles, and email communications published by the Fed
- Collaboration through FedNow testing and the implementation processes
The Fed in August released an update on the FedNow Service, indicating that it will be launched in phases with a target release date of 2023 or 2024.