The Federal Reserve released market practices to advance standardized implementation of the request for payment (RFP) feature of instant payments. These recommendations were developed by an industry work group with diverse industry representation to promote a strong and consistent customer experience.
The market practices are detailed, tactical and immediately applicable for financial institutions and their service providers that are ready to offer RFP to customers. Billers, merchants and other industry participants will also find them relevant, given the growing uptake of instant payments.
“We believe that this collective effort is going to benefit the entire payments ecosystem,” said Nick Stanescu, FedNow Service business executive and senior vice president of Federal Reserve Financial Services. “More than 90 organizations, from fintechs to banks to merchants, took part in the work group, reflecting the widespread commitment to address common challenges with an agreed-upon approach to execution.”
The work group’s market practices focus on a single, significant RFP use case: consumer-to-business bill payments, though some practices developed for this use case may also apply to other RFP use cases.
RFP has the potential to be a powerful tool that financial institutions and service providers can use to build instant bill pay services to help consumers better manage their cash flows.
As a result of industry feedback, the Federal Reserve also updated the FedNow Service Operating Procedures to provide context related to RFP warranties.
Read more about this collaborative effort and what it means for the industry and download the RFP market practices now on FedNowExplorer.org (Off-site).
