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FedNow Is Live

federalreserve.gov

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Re: FedNow Is Live

#671

Post by tjpnz »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #516
tombert wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think KiwiFarms is a cesspool and I think Null in particular is an extremely crappy human, but despite that I disagreed with the credit card processors pulling them, because they really did have a near-monopoly for online payments, meaning that this could be considered stifling of free speech. However, I think I'll have less of an issue for it if there's the government-backed means in which to send them money; at t…

This is a dramatic whitewashing of KiwiFarms. KiwiFarms was not deplatformed for wrongthink or because people disagreed with their ideas. They were deplatformed for coordinating harassment campaigns that resulted in at least three confirmed suicides. That is not protected speech.

One of those "confirmed" suicides occurred in Japan and the individual was also a US citizen. The US State Department doesn't list any suicides when it was said to have happened (June 2021 - there was one prior to that in May and another in February 2022). Reporting the death of a foreign national to their respective embassy is mandatory in Japan.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...

Re: FedNow Is Live

#672

Post by hathawsh »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #669
hathawsh wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it, the innovative part is that the service is push-only. With ACH and most other systems in the US, payees can pull from accounts, while FedNow has no support for forceful debits. That's a significant shift in the way we think about payments (for the better, IMHO). This has been done before by other service providers, but not by someone with this kind of influence and clout in the US.

Hmm, surely there's some kind of support for a pull request that has to be approved, no? It seems like requiring the consumer to manually set up a push payment to a company would probably be annoying and error prone, compared to having them entering their details on a website and then the company requesting payment.

Right, a pull request is called a Request For Payment (RFP). It is an important feature and it's already online.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#673

Post by TulliusCicero »

galkk wrote: post #626

The announcement is very unclear. What I as layperson will get from it? Is it an app FedPayPal/Fedmo that I will be able to use for sending funds? Is it something that will be used by other apps to have cheaper funds transfer? Because if it is latter then I'm afraid that entrenched players will just keep doing what they're doing, keeping the profits but offloading processing to that system if it will be cheaper. The…

As I understand it, eventually this should lead to ubiquitous, cheap/free, instant payments, similar to UPI in India. That can be very convenient and useful.

Now, obviously there are various competing services for this kind of use case already: Venmo, Cashapp, Zelle, etc. So maybe it won't be better enough to feel like an improvement, but that's the aim.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#674

Post by TulliusCicero »

earthboundkid wrote: post #221
2143 wrote: post #179

Funny thing about topics like this is that people of any given country is oblivious to how other countries have solved that problem, or the challenges other countries face, or inturn the problems that they themselves face. Regarding payment systems specifically, people generally don't realize what they're missing. Pick anybody from anywhere and they'll tell you they've been able to do everything they ever wanted to d…

When I lived in Japan twenty years ago, everybody just wired money electronically and checks were long obsolete. In the US, I write checks every week or so. They also had a system where you would put your checkbook into the teller machine and it would print your credits and debits into the book for you. It was very convenient. On the downside, the ATMs were turned off (!) during national holidays, so you had to get c…

> In the US, I write checks every week or so.

What the hell? I need 'checks' of some kind (regular check or cashier's check) maybe once a year for something like a deposit on a rental home.

For actual rent payments and the like I use Zelle, since most major banks support it. What do you need actual paper checks for?

Re: FedNow Is Live

#676

Post by brewdad »

wredue wrote: post #613
aeyes wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything special about the IBM MQ implementation which makes it worth naming them? It looks like you can connect to it using AMQP so I wonder why they wouldn't just say something generic like "MQ" or "AMQP protocol".

It’s a little especially strange as IBM hasn’t exactly made a great reputation for themselves over the last several years. Name dropping IBM makes me think that the reserve is generally not confident and is ready to blame IBM for what they expect to happen.

More likely, everyone in charge of this project on the government side is over 55 and still think of IBM as a signal of quality and reliability.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#677

Post by astrange »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #664
goralph wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not possible currently in the US? That’s quite surprising!

No, US bank to bank transfers/payments are quite slow, and not commonly used for small transactions. But there are a couple substitutes that are used: * Zelle is basically better bank transfers and is already supported by many (most?) US banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) * Random 'third party' money transfer services like Venmo, Cashapp, Paypal, etc. But similar to messaging in the US, the…

Debit cards can be used for instant payments and are used to eg pay Uber drivers. Or wire transfers.

And Zelle is a bank to bank transfer network, not a third party service.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#678

Post by TulliusCicero »

xp84 wrote: post #371
zerocrates wrote: post #317

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…

I mean, all you need for Zelle to send someone money is an id, if they have a Zelle-supported bank account. Which is effectively the same situation as bank transfer payments in other countries.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#679

Post by monkeywork »

aidenn0 wrote: post #436
HoyaSaxa wrote: post #298

For those curious, it is really using IBM MQ[1] under the hood and uses a bespoke flavor of the ISO 20022 specification. The FedNow Service itself is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what actually happens from an end-to-end perspective. We've been working to become a Certified Service Provider so feel free to ask me anything. I'm happy to share anything that is not under NDA. [1] https://www.ibm.com/products/mq

Is the eventual end-game that I can send money from my account at Bank A, to a friend's account at Bank B to split a check at dinner without using a third party like Venmo?

It sounds very much like some of the Interac services that we have here in Canada (and have had for ages). We can do what is called "email money transfer" where as long as I know your email address I can go into my bank app, transfer money to you and it will automatically show up in your bank account.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#680

Post by TulliusCicero »

hathawsh wrote: post #672
TulliusCicero wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, surely there's some kind of support for a pull request that has to be approved, no? It seems like requiring the consumer to manually set up a push payment to a company would probably be annoying and error prone, compared to having them entering their details on a website and then the company requesting payment.

Right, a pull request is called a Request For Payment (RFP). It is an important feature and it's already online.

Ah okay, makes sense.
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