CFOs Confront Real-Time Money Movement as Weekends Go Live

Real-time money movement is rapidly moving toward always-on status. The Federal Reserve has laid out a path to expand the operating days of its largest wholesale settlement rails, pushing final settlement deeper into weekends and holidays and shrinking the “wait until Monday” window that corporate finance teams have long used as a control point.

What Fedwire Is

As noted by the central bank, the Fedwire Funds Service is the Federal Reserve Banks’ real-time gross settlement system for large-value U.S. dollar transfers. The system enables funds transfers that are immediate, final and irrevocable once processed, and participation is limited to depository institutions and certain other financial institutions that hold an account at a Federal Reserve Bank.

In the Fed’s own Federal Register notice on the operating-days expansion, Fedwire activity includes both bank-to-bank transfers and “customer” transfers sent by participants on behalf of customers, including corporations.

PYMNTS reported that the Federal Reserve announced it intends to expand the operating days of Fedwire Funds Service and the National Settlement Service (NSS) to run Sunday through Friday, including weekday holidays, with the changeover happening in 2028 or 2029. The Fed also said daily operating hours would remain the same, with Fedwire open 22 hours per day and NSS open 21.5 hours per day.

The Federal Register notice includes a clear scale marker for Fedwire settlement activity: The average value of a Fedwire payment in 2024 was $5.4 million. The volume growth was 8.6% in 2024. Those figures matter because they show “real time” at the wholesale layer is about final settlement for high-value flows, not just faster messaging.

What Weekend Settlement Enables

The Fed’s shift is designed to close the gap between business hours and real-time money movement. The fund flows have traditionally been calendar-bound: large-value real estate closings, commercial loan fundings and trade settlements that once waited until Monday could be completed on Sunday once 22×6 operations are in place.

NSS expansion matters as well because NSS provides multilateral net settlement for private-sector clearing systems.

The Fed’s plan would allow those arrangements to settle more frequently across more operating days, which can accelerate downstream corporate flows that depend on clearing and settlement timing.

Where CFOs Intersect With Settlements

The Federal Reserve has been explicit that expanding operating days is not a simple calendar change. The long-term roadmap signals that it requires time for participants to adapt systems and, importantly, liquidity management practices.

When settlement availability expands into weekends, the core finance questions become operational and governance driven: When should high-value payments be released, what internal controls must be satisfied before release, and how does the organization ensure it can fund obligations when the settlement week effectively starts on Sunday?

In evidence of the shift toward automation and accelerated cash cycles (which would be aided by real time settlement), earlier this month found that “strategic movers” that have enjoyed optimal cash cycles — and integrated automation and AI across receivables, payables and forecasting — have 27% more accounts receivable automation than “liquidity constrained” firms. Near-real-time posting and reconciliation fueled by AI converts sales into usable cash with minimal friction, according to PYMNTS Intelligence data compiled in collaboration with Bottomline.