FedNow Fortifies Security for Instant Payments

Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) will launch a new risk mitigation tool for FedNow® Service participants on Tuesday (April 28).

The new network intelligence application programming interface (API) provides receiver account-level data observed over the service and uses historical FedNow Service data to enrich insights over time, giving these participating financial institutions and service providers access to instant, actionable risk insights to support early risk mitigation and informed decision-making, FRFS said in a Thursday (April 23) press release.

“The network intelligence API delivers instant, network-level data insights that complement participants’ existing risk management capabilities, providing more information — and confidence — before a transaction is made,” Nick Stanescu, executive vice president and chief executive of the FedNow Service, said in the release. “This advancement reinforces our commitment to strengthening risk controls while maintaining the speed and reliability that define the FedNow Service.”

FedNow Service participants have been testing this new tool since last fall, according to an article posted by FRFS on Tuesday.

Kevin Olsen, senior vice president of innovation and strategy at real-time payments platform Pidgin, said in the article: “The network intelligence tool gives financial institutions something they have never had before in instant payments: a network-level view of transaction behavior that extends beyond their own data.”

Tede Forman, president of payment solutions at financial technology provider Jack Henry, said: “Being able to enrich transaction data before fraud review is a tremendous benefit of employing the network intelligence tool.”

The FedNow Service was launched in July 2023 as a nationwide payments infrastructure that facilitates instant payment capabilities. At the time, it was the first new nationwide payments infrastructure to be implemented in about 40 years.

Stanescu told PYMNTS in an interview posted in November that feedback from the industry guides the priorities of the FedNow Service and has done so since before its launch.

At that time, Stanescu said the FedNow Service was piloting a network intelligence tool that lets banks check a receiver’s account before sending a payment.

“We’re going to see more participants, more volume, more new features and functionality, and more innovation,” Stanescu said. He added that instant payments are “the new normal in money movement.”