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FedNow Is Live

federalreserve.gov

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: FedNow Is Live

#391

Is there going to be a universal SDK / API we can use with this? This would cut alot of middle companies out of the payments industry (or at least put pressure on lowering fees). That would be a huge win. Wish we could do the same for the credit card companies. Would be great if the Federal Government could intervene in some way to have Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover use the same API interface for pa…

Even when offered a more competitive option, consumers love credit cards - the merchant gets soaked, while they get cash back. Given how the networks are, you'd have to have an unprecedented collusion of merchants to break the credit networks open.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing page is all but worthless... no indication what so ever about what even basic tier pricing is, or could be.

Agreed. This is really strange from their pricing page: >> Get started for free to test our APIs & unblock your development team. Talk to us about your transaction volume to get the best pricing with flexibility to grow. You would think there would _at least_ be a ceiling price. Makes me wonder why they can't show _any_ pricing.

Not to answer for Moov, but IIRC, they're still open source + a paid option with banking partners.

I think the pricing is weird because you can start (and run!) for free, while the end to end solution requires negotiating with multiple parties.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#393
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this end the T + 2day ridiculousness? It should be T + 1millisecond at worst. What does it take to update 2 "balance" values in databases?

> What does it take to update 2 "balance" values in databases? Quite a bit more than you seem to think. https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers...

This was super helpful, I have always wondered how this all worked

Re: FedNow Is Live

#394
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised you're writing checks every week: I haven't written a check in years. ACH transfers, sure, but not physical checks. I do still receive them occasionally, almost always as printed checks from companies.

It depends. I have to use checks to pay my landscaper and housekeeper, because there isn't another unilateral payment document. By this I mean, in the US everyone could use CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle (glorified ACH, right?), etc. for p2p payment. If you have the same bank, many banks have a trivial "send money to another customer's account" feature. However, to do so requires essentially a 'handshake' where the tw…

Aren't you just describing cash? Cheque has the same issue as the online alternatives in that it could "bounce" - cash (or I guess crypto) can't

Re: FedNow Is Live

#395
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised you're writing checks every week: I haven't written a check in years. ACH transfers, sure, but not physical checks. I do still receive them occasionally, almost always as printed checks from companies.

It depends. I have to use checks to pay my landscaper and housekeeper, because there isn't another unilateral payment document. By this I mean, in the US everyone could use CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle (glorified ACH, right?), etc. for p2p payment. If you have the same bank, many banks have a trivial "send money to another customer's account" feature. However, to do so requires essentially a 'handshake' where the tw…

Yeah. And with online banking apps, it's basically not worth anyone's time to do the handshake because depositing just isn't a big deal [ADDED: If there's an in-person transaction]. I use credit/debit/ACH 95%+ of the time but if that's not an option check is easy.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USG has issued national ID documents for more than 200 years. They're called passports.

Everyone who is sufficiently against national ID must never have left the United States, then? Correlation or causation, I wonder.

[flagged]

Re: FedNow Is Live

#397

It will be interesting to see how this affects "toxic," deplatformed, and to some degree debanked (at least from PayPal and CC processors) entities, like the KiwiFarms. While this page is somewhat vague about the private/public status of the Fed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm it seems pretty well established that federally chartered corporations, like the USPS and Amtrak (e.g., https://en.wikipe…

The Federal Reserve is a private company with a chair that is chosen by the President of the US with advice and consent from the Senate, and serves a four-year term. There is no term limitation for this office. The reason the US government has a national debt is because that debt is owed to the Federal Reserve, which is a private bank that loans the US government money and that sets the US monetary policy.

... https://www.thebalancemoney.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-de...

Re: FedNow Is Live

#398
post #336

I know that these are famous last words on Hacker News, so I post them very hesitantly...but presumably this is bad news for Plaid, right?

Wouldn't it also be real bad news for Zelle? And in theory Venmo/Cashapp/etc

Zelle is already owned by a consortium of banks. Even if FedNow were to make Zelle obsolete, it wouldn't do anything to harm the banks, so they ultimately wouldn't care.

Meanwhile, Venmo is owned by PayPal, who deserves to become obsolete, so we should all be cheering this on.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#399
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised you're writing checks every week: I haven't written a check in years. ACH transfers, sure, but not physical checks. I do still receive them occasionally, almost always as printed checks from companies.

It depends. I have to use checks to pay my landscaper and housekeeper, because there isn't another unilateral payment document. By this I mean, in the US everyone could use CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle (glorified ACH, right?), etc. for p2p payment. If you have the same bank, many banks have a trivial "send money to another customer's account" feature. However, to do so requires essentially a 'handshake' where the tw…

Zelle may still allow for you to send money to a non-Zelle account - as a dark pattern, they'll hold that cash for the recipient and give them an opportunity to sign up and receive it. This was a big pressure point for smaller banks and CUs to sign up.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#400
post #301

Is there going to be a universal SDK / API we can use with this? This would cut alot of middle companies out of the payments industry (or at least put pressure on lowering fees). That would be a huge win. Wish we could do the same for the credit card companies. Would be great if the Federal Government could intervene in some way to have Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover use the same API interface for pa…

> This would cut alot of middle companies out of the payments industry Not really. All it will do is let the same companies change the way they handle average citizens' payments. It's the same as Open Banking in Europe. It is supposed allow small businesses to leverage this to enable innovation and all that stuff, but when you want to use these APIs you find there are limitations on who can actually use it. For examp…

> So, not really that useful for a small startup wanting to make a product out of it.

I mean, 50k puts it out of “a couple people starting something in their garage”, but it doesn’t really lock out much beyond that. That’s pretty close to the franchise fee for opening a McDonald’s.

Yes, it could be more equitable, but if that’s the only barrier to access, it’s… pretty open for even quite small businesses.

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