Payday, real estate among top early use cases for community bank
03/13/2026
Bank Independent (Off-site), a locally owned community bank serving North Alabama since 1947, offers comprehensive banking services across the Huntsville metro area.
In our latest Real Talk profile, Kelly Burdette, senior vice president of marketing and digital, and Adam Letson, product and payments officer, discuss their FedNow® Service implementation journey and how instant payments benefit their customers.
Q: How did you recognize the need for instant payments among your customers?
KB: “Looking at the competitive landscape, we knew we couldn’t afford to fall behind. Payments aren’t just transactions — they’re relationships. We have a saying around here: ‘Lose the payment, lose the customer.’ This underscores why modern payment capabilities have become a key strategy for our organization and are absolutely critical to our success.
“Our vision is to be the bank of choice in the communities we serve. To be that bank of choice, we have to adopt innovations and offer solutions that match how our customers live and work today. As everything else in their lives has gotten faster, their money movement needed to get faster, too.”
Q: During implementation, were there any experiences that surprised you?
AL: “Within the first week of implementing instant payments, we started noticing a steady stream of early payday transactions posting to customers’ accounts — something we’d never seen before in our transaction mix, but it’s been a consistent use case ever since. We hadn’t advertised our instant payments capability at all — customers were discovering it on their own and immediately putting it to use. It was incredibly encouraging to see that the FedNow Service was immediately, organically usable for customers who needed it.
“We’ve also noticed that real estate professionals, for example, are receiving their commission payments instantly, rather than waiting days for a check to clear. As these use cases come to light, it creates a compelling reason for them to use more of our services in their financial lives, whether that’s our debit cards, credit cards or instant payment products. That natural progression toward deeper engagement is ultimately what led to the monetization of this solution, and it helps us deepen our relationships with our customers.”
Q: What strategies are you using to identify those valuable use cases and ensure adoption across your organization?
KB: “One of our big priorities right now is simply getting the word out internally, especially to our customer-facing teams. These are the colleagues who have those day-to-day conversations where use cases naturally emerge. When a business customer mentions cash flow challenges or a consumer talks about needing funds in an emergency, we want our team to immediately think, ‘Instant payments could help solve that problem.’
“At the same time, we’re approaching this as a two-way street. We’re educating internally about what’s possible, and we’re equally focused on listening to what our customers are telling us. Sometimes the best innovations come from simply paying attention to the problems customers mention in passing — those pain points they’ve almost resigned themselves to living with.”
Q: What helped make your instant payment implementation strategy successful?
AL: “Engaging stakeholders well before technical planning began was a big part of our success. Instead of jumping straight to implementation plans and the ‘how,’ we focused first on helping everyone understand the ‘why’ behind this initiative. Why was Bank Independent pursuing instant payments? What strategic value did we see?
“We brought in our finance and accounting colleagues, operations staff, fraud and security specialists, BSA compliance experts — basically anyone who would touch this capability in any way. Rather than one-way communication, we asked questions like, ‘What concerns do you have?’ and ‘How can we help your area prepare?’ This created genuine dialogue and surfaced potential issues early. By the time implementation arrived, it wasn’t a shock. It was the natural culmination of a collaborative journey we’d been on together.”
Q: Are there any learnings or advice that you would offer to other financial institutions who know they want to adopt the FedNow Service but may be worried about “flipping the switch” on instant payments?
KB: “I’d say that starting with receive-only enablement helps with risk management and allows your teams to adjust to the new world of instant payments. We have not seen any fraud or risk that really comes from just receiving instant payments. Start talking about it openly throughout your organization and bring those concerns to the surface. Discuss your approach with your teams and begin building familiarity with instant payments. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the same position years from now, wondering and wishing while opportunities pass you by. I encourage even cautious organizations to start with receive-only capabilities rather than wait.”
Want to learn more about the real-world impact of instant payments? Read more FedNow Q&As here.