US instant payments drop in 2023. Definitely sucks it took this long, but it’ll be ubiquitous and replaces ACH.

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....

How will this impact things like Venmo or Apple Pay, both of which currently charge some % for instant transfer to your checking account.

Personal opinion: significantly. FedNow instant payments are a penny for up to $100k transfers, with the eventual plan to support up to $500k transfers.

I don't see how it would impact Apple Pay, for example. In Australia, we have instant payments already, and Apple/Google/Samsung Pay is used alongside it - completely separate.

If it's anything like in the EU (more specific: SEPA-Zone) then in 2027 you can meaningfully use it.

Funny, never had a problem with it, even across countries

since we are talking consumers here, what would it look like to a regular user? would I have to walk around asking people for their account numbers and routing numbers to FedNow them the money?

If it’s anything like Canada’s INTERAC e-transfers, you ask for the person’s email address; they receive an email bouncing them to a SAML sign-on portal with support for all major banks, which lets them use their bank to SSO into the payment system; and then the payment system uses the SSO-reflected banking details as the destination for depositing the money.

INTERAC now lets you set up auto deposit - simply go to your bank’s online banking portal and register your email and from then on any incoming transactions go to whatever account you chose. Very handy! No more “security questions”

They’re also rolling out support for phone numbers as identifiers in addition to email addresses but my bank doesn’t seem to support sending to phone numbers (or registering mine as auto deposit) yet.

It will eventually support aliases (like Zelle does) as well as cross border payments, but my understanding is that it won’t at launch (as the desire is to get the ACH delays gone first). I don’t have consumer UX insight, only into the ISO20022 message plumbing (user->institution->Fed->institution->user).

In India, we have UPI and other forms of instant transaction system (all of them are free in any decent bank, I believe).

With UPI, you can connect your bank account (no matter which bank it is) with any UPI based payment app and create IDs which can be shared for receiving or requesting payments. (These IDs are unique on basis of both app and bank).

So I can connect my bank account to gpay and create a new ID. Send them to others who are using gpay or any other UPI app (bank apps also have UPI functionality built in). They can send the payment to the ID (which will be automatically added to my bank). This is instant.

It can also be used for requesting payment by others and I can accept or decline the request.

Alternatively, phone numbers can also be used to fetch the IDs a person has if you have enabled it (it's by default)

In the UK (and I believe all of Europe), the system is indeed based on bank account numbers and sort codes, but popular banking apps like Monzo will do WhatsApp-style contact lists, where banking details of your phone contacts are synced and you can just pick them from the list (note: account number are not considered secret sensitive information). Banking apps will usually save someone’s details for future usage.

In Australia the system is called Osko and we link our mobile phone numbers or email address to it.

I use this to find out who owns a mobile number.

Punch in the mobile number to the banking app and more often than not the mobile's owner name is displayed.

That's definitely a down side to it. I think you used to be able to choose your username, but now the only options my bank gives me are name + surname, first initial + surname or, oddly, middle name + surname

People do this type of lookup today with Cashapp

Sounds promising but I will believe it when I see it (and use it).

> Zelle is the closest thing and it is a joke for every day usability.

I am randomly banned from Zelle for no particular reason. AML misfire, I guess. They won't tell me.

What if someone don't use Messenger? Venmo/Paypal are still the most popular options in my circles, largely because they are not tied to any specific platform.

It says it works across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. What are the chances of someone having none of those?

We do exist! Never had WhatsApp or instagram, deleted Facebook more than a decade ago.

Since they're all owned by a company with an extremely polarizing public opinion, I imagine the reasons someone might not use one of them would likely double as reasons not to use the others, either.

I'm a 100%, and so's my wife.

100% for me!

I feel like cashapp, PayPal, and venmo work pretty well