FedNow is almost here: 3 questions with Temenos’ Heman Daswani

FedNow is almost here: 3 questions with Temenos' Heman Daswani

How the Fed plans to reshape the US payments ecosystem with the FedNow service?

by SARA KHAIRI

The Federal Reserve’s long-awaited digital payments system, FedNow, will be deployed in phases, with the initial launch planned for July 2023.

More than 120 organizations including Square Financial Services, FIS, Fiserv, and Temenos have joined other banks, credit unions, and payments technology organizations to become a part of FedNow’s pilot program. These participants will support the development, testing, and adoption of the FedNow Service, as well as facilitate the development of services and use cases that leverage FedNow functionality.

Tearsheet spoke to Heman Daswani, principal consultant of the business solutions group at Temenos, about how the new payment rail will facilitate near real-time money transfers, bill payments, and other consumer activities.

How will FedNow facilitate instant payments?

Heman Daswani:

• What we’ve seen with real-time payments schemes globally is that it provides more transparency into current funds. We know that 2 of 3 Americans are living paycheck to paycheck – greater transparency and predictability can potentially improve the way Americans manage their cash flow, and help avoid late fees and accidental overdrafts.
• Real-time payments will also enable faster, more seamless customer experiences. As FedNow becomes ubiquitous, it will improve Account-to-Account (A2A) transfer use cases – from my account at one bank to my account in another bank, from my bank account to my trading account like Robinhood, for example.
• At the same time, the experience will improve individual payments processes -- it will also improve B2B payments with access to more information, and ease of reconciliation.

How will FedNow resolve the pain points associated with Bill Pay?

Heman Daswani:

• With FedNow and real-time payments, the process could be a lot easier. You get a bill from the service provider, it can have an embedded link to make the payment that will automatically redirect to your online banking portal where you review the details and hit submit. All this with the peace of mind that the payment will reach the service provider in seconds.
• Small businesses can also leverage the network to move money faster. In the past, if they used bill pay they wouldn’t be able to get funds to suppliers as quickly (taking 3-5 business days). So real-time payments can enable SMBs to respond to customer needs faster.

How important it is for businesses to join the FedNow payments network going forward?

Heman Daswani:

• Ultimately, FedNow and real-time payments will be beneficial to all financial services organizations.
• Most of the existing payment providers and fintechs are overlay services built on top of the ACH rail -- these services give the perception of instant payments to the end customer (i.e. remote deposit capture) but expose the financial institutions and fintechs to credit risk. On the front end, it looks like the money has moved, but it still needs two days to process on the back end. It’s to their benefit to adopt real-time payments to lower their risk.

Market recap

Fintech stocks saw a sharp fall in the past week

Alphabet - up 7% to $108.90 per share

• Shares of Google-parent Alphabet were moving higher, seemingly in response to the WSJ report that the company is planning to add chat functionality to Google Search.

MoneyLion - down 14% to $0.5016 per share

• MoneyLion, which went public through a special purpose acquisition company, has been hammered since it started trading independently.
• Growing customer acquisition costs and provision for potential losses on loan receivables show the company is still far from profitability -- as the market deals with rising inflation and higher interest rates.

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