MILWAUKEE, Wis.– Corporate Central said it has been selected to participate in the Federal Reserve Banks’ pilot program for their upcoming instant payments offering, the FedNow Service. Some 110 organizations in all have been selected to be a part of the pilot.
The program is designed to support development, testing, and adoption of the FedNow Service – as well as encourage development of services and use cases that leverage FedNow functionality.
In choosing participants, the Federal Reserve said it sought to ensure the program is representative of various types of institutions and service providers, connection types, settlement arrangements, and experience levels.
“We are honored to be part of the FedNow Pilot Program and eager to support the development of the FedNow Service,” said Gregg Tushaus, SVP-chief technology and strategy Officer at Corporate Central. “We look forward to working with credit unions to help the design of services and functionality supported by instant payments. We invite our members to collaborate with us on how we can best assist them through our technology and settlement solutions to leverage this opportunity for early adoption of the FedNow Service.”
Help Shape ‘Readiness’
According to the Fed, through their direct involvement in the FedNow Pilot Program, participating financial institutions and processors will help shape features and functions, provide input into the overall user experience, ensure readiness for testing, and be the first to experience FedNow during the closed-loop product phase prior to going live.
The participating institutions will also have the option to participate in an advisory phase to kick off some time in February. The initial phase will focus on further defining the service and adoption roadmap, industry readiness approaches, and overall instant payments strategy.
Corporate Central noted that in addition to receiving expressions of interest from eligible financial institutions and processors, the Federal Reserve reported it fielded more than 80 submissions from organizations that provide payment systems and services for financial institutions and end users or those interested in implementing instant payments to meet business or consumer needs. In response, the Fed will involve these engaged “ecosystem participants” in select program activities beginning later in 2021, in coordination with their financial institution partners as appropriate.
To Provide Feedback
Among other activities, they will provide feedback on specific features and use cases and help support end-to-end testing of solutions leveraging the FedNow Service.
“Their participation is expected to help drive adoption, innovation, breadth, and depth of end-user solutions over time. Additional details regarding ecosystem participation will be announced soon,” the Fed said.
A list of participants can be viewed at FRBservices.org.