Coinbase and Stripe announced a strategic partnership that will give their respective platforms’ capabilities in handling fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat transactions.

Under the agreement, Stripe and Coinbase will benefit from three key integrations. First, Stripe users will have the option to receive crypto payouts in stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) on Base. Customers will also be able to convert fiat to USDC.  

Finally, Coinbase will integrate Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp into Coinbase Wallet, allowing Stripe users to purchase cryptocurrencies using credit cards or Apple Pay.

A Long Time Coming

Although Stripe started accepting crypto payments in 2014, it halted crypto transactions in 2018 because of bitcoin’s volatility. The payments processor has been hinting at a return to crypto support for some time, and the new integrations with Coinbase are expected to launch as early as this summer.

Coinbase’s Layer 2 Network, Base, has become a popular option because it offers increased efficiency at a lower expense. USDC is a stablecoin on Base that tracks the U.S. dollar one-to-one.

Stablecoins have been increasingly adopted by major payments processors, in part because they provide a secure medium to transfer funds cross-border. Stripe asserts that its USDC support will facilitate more efficient cross-border transfers to 150 countries.

Ups and Downs

The partnership is another positive step for Coinbase, which has experienced an impressive Q1 fueled by a surge in the crypto market. One reason for the uptick was the approval of bitcoin ETFs, most of which are managed by Coinbase.

However, it hasn’t been all good news for the crypto exchange recently. Coinbase has continued to fight legal battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which contends that many of the funds and tokens on the exchange should be considered securities, implying that Coinbase has been operating as an unregistered broker.

Consequently, Coinbase brought its own allegations against the SEC, suing the commission for refusing to release documents related to previous Ethereum probes. While its unclear how the crypto exchange’s legal issues will end, the partnership with Stripe has so far been dubbed a victory for both platforms, and a significant step toward mainstream crypto adoption.

The post Stripe to Accept Crypto Again After Coinbase Deal appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The European Union Council has adopted new rules that require instant payments in euros to be fully available in the EU. Customers will be able to transfer euro-denominated money within 10 seconds at any time, even outside business hours, to any other EU member state. The move is widely expected to help European payments companies compete on a more equal footing with Visa and Mastercard, according to Reuters.

The law is expected to go into effect in April. Banks located in the eurozone are required to begin allowing instant payments within 18 months of that date. Banks in the non-eurozone area have until 2027 to comply and until 2028 to allow instant payments made from an account in a local currency.

Payment service providers that offer standard credit transfers in euro will also be required to both send and receive instant payments in euro. If banks apply any charges for these services, they must be no higher than for standard credit transfers.

A Needed Change

The landscape for instant payments in the EU has been fairly desolate prior to this new initiative. Several EU countries allow free transfers that take a day or two, but true instant payments are offered at a higher rate and cannot be used for cross-border transactions. SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), the existing EU network, allows for cross-border transactions between EU countries, but countries can transact only in euros, and uptake has been slow.

The instant payment rules were first proposed in October 2022. At the time, Mairead McGuinness, the Financial Services Chief at The European Union, described the move as “seismic and comparable to the move from mail to e-mail.”

Analysts have expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the new instant payments protocol.

“Mandating a requirement and having it go into action are two vastly different things, but I am very optimistic about this announcement,” said Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] already has a regional play, and the EU is the next logical one. We can add to the list the announcement of India’s UPI and Google Pay. Regional cross-border is the first step in achieving global, cross-continent, cross-ocean transfers. Global instant payments are imminent.”

The post EU Takes a Giant Step to Promote Instant Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The Reserve Bank of India’s directive to Visa and Mastercard to halt all card-based business-to-business payments in the country has begun raising questions. Although no official answer has been given, experts are speculating it is related to a crackdown on Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.

The RBI, India’s central bank, confirmed that the decision will not affect all corporate card payments; only commercial transactions routed through third parties. If the RBI had suspended all B2B payments, it might have been seen as a move intended to curtail credit card challengers to its UPI instant payments system, but that is not the case. It’s worth noting that in India, as in Brazil, instant payments via domestic networks are the most popular form of payments, far exceeding credit cards.

In India, a subset of fintech firms operate in a category called “business payment solution providers” (BPSPs), enabling payments to merchants that do not accept card payments for a fee. The targeted companies appear to all be fintechs that are not in compliance with India’s payment regulations.  

Searching for an Explanation

So far, the RBI has declined to explain why it has placed these restrictions, reportedly withholding information even from the affected companies. “Visa received a communication from the RBI on February 8, in what appears to be an industry-wide request for information on the role of business payment solution providers (BPSPs) in commercial and business payments,” a Visa India spokesperson said in a statement.

Some news sources are asserting that the RBI is primarily concerned about money flowing through merchants without strong KYC protocols. Indian news channel NDTV obtained a document from the RBI alleging that one of the card networks had created an arrangement with intermediaries to create an unauthorized payment system. The intermediary would accept card payments for commercial payments and then route the funds via digital payments to non-card-accepting recipients.

“The primary institutions that should take note of this are financial institutions or card schemes that sponsor fintechs via banking-as-a-service plays and BIN [Banking Identification Number] sponsorships,” said Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “KYC is a big problem in these scenarios, because the fintechs add another link in the chain and decrease visibility, but the sponsoring entity still has full responsibility for KYC policy.”

The post India Stops Some B2B Payments, and Many Ask Why appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

HSBC’s announcement of Zing, a cross-border transfer app that will launch shortly in the UK, shows one of the world’s largest banks wielding its muscles once again. HSBC becomes the first major legacy bank to compete in the steep-trajectory consumer cross-border space.  

Zing will be available to UK consumers through Apple’s App Store and Alphabet’s Google Play, and is eventually expected to roll out to other countries. It is specifically designed for users who do not have an HSBC account.

Zing is licensed as an e-money institution by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. Therefore, Zing funds are not considered bank deposits and are not insured by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the UK’s version of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Making Payments Global

For users of the service, the primary question around Zing is how it might make their lives easier. “For consumers, Zing would offer an additional cross-border payment option for remittances and retail purchases,” said Elisa Tavilla, Director of Debit Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Although P2P mobile payment apps are common in many global markets, most only support domestic payments. Super apps, such as AliPay+ and other mobile wallets, are also making it easier for tourists and local businesses to transact in foreign currencies.” 

There’s also the larger issue of what this means—not just for HSBC, but for all banks considering entry into this space. Zing puts HSBC in competition with fintechs like Revolut and Wise, in a market that banks have heretofore conceded to so-called super apps. Zing follows on the heels of the HSBC Global Wallet, which was announced in May 2021. HSBC’s Global Money, introduced in 2020, offers existing customers a fee-free currency service.

“This poses another interesting twist in the race for market leadership in cross-border services,” said Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Correspondent banking is protecting its turf, but fintechs are nipping at their heels. Banks are sprouting up their own fintech divisions to remain relevant—and the card schemes are claiming that they already do this, they’ve done it for a long time, and they do it better than anyone.”

The post HSBC Muscles Into Cross-Border Payments With Zing appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The practice of charging doctors additional fees to receive electronic insurance reimbursements may be coming to a close.

According to an investigation by ProPublica, insurers currently charge physicians as much as 5% to get paid electronically. But the U.S. House has introduced a bill that would prohibit insurers and their intermediaries from levying fees on doctors for receiving electronic payments.

The Affordable Care Act encouraged doctors to use electronic payments in health care, since they are faster and easier to process than checks. In 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) predicted that shifting from paper to electronic billing would save $3 billion to $4.5 billion over 10 years.

Initially, the agency prohibited fees for electronic funds transfers. As of August 2017, CMS posted a notice informing insurance companies that they weren’t allowed to charge physicians a fee when the companies paid the doctors for their work. But in 2018, as the result of lobbying by the payment processor Zelis, CMS changed its stance. That year, the fee statement disappeared without explanation. In July 2022, CMS issued a directive explicitly stating that additional fees were permitted.

Breaking Down the Fees

Nearly 60% of medical practices said they were compelled to pay fees for electronic payments at least some of the time, according to a 2021 survey conducted by the Medical Group Management Association. At that time, the fees broke down as such:

• 10% were charged 1% of their total reimbursement

• 43% were charged 2%
• 43% were charged 3%
• 4% were charged 4% 

According to the Physicians for a National Health Program, even when doctors have asked to be paid by check to avoid the surcharge, insurers often resume the electronic payments—and the fees—against their wishes. 

The AMA Signs On

The proposed legislation has the backing of the American Medical Association. Last month the AMA adopted a resolution officially opposed to “growing and excessive” fees on electronic funds transfer payments.

“We don’t tolerate paying fees to receive direct deposit of a paycheck,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina. “Likewise, doctors and patients should not be forced to pay predatory fees on electronic payments on essential health services.”

For its part, Zelis has positioned itself as improving the B2B payment environment for healthcare providers. Although it hasn’t commented on the pending legislation, the payment processor told ProPublica that its services remove “many of the obstacles that keep providers from efficiently initiating, receiving, and benefitting from electronic payments.”

The post Doctors May No Longer Owe Surcharges for Electronic Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The adoption of ISO 20022 is well underway, especially within central banks and larger institutions. This International Organization for Standardization (ISO) format for electronic payment data interchange between FIs is heralded as the solution to boost efficiency, cut costs, and enhance transparency between organizations.

In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Laura Sullivan, Senior Product Manager at Form3, and Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how the implementation of ISO 20022 is affecting SWIFT, the benefits and barriers to adoption, and the state of organizational infrastructures that could inhibit the ISO standards from fully benefiting the organization.

How ISO 20022 Is Affecting SWIFT

In March, SWIFT began the migration of its cross-border payments functionality onto ISO 20022. Under the auspices of ISO 20022, financial institutions will be able to modify the payment messages they send and receive through SWIFT from the message type (MT), which is a legacy format, to the new message type XML (MX) format. This new format not only holds more data but also is expected to increase interoperability between financial institutions.

Many instant payment schemes have already adopted the ISO 20022 standard, including real-time payments. Wire payment networks such as Fedwire, SWIFT, and Lynx have announced their plans to adopt these standards fully by the end of 2025.

Newer schemes have an easier time adopting ISO standards, according to Sullivan. However, when it comes to Fedwire and SWIFT, converting from an already existing format can prove more challenging.

She recounted what she learned at a recent conference and how banks that had been sending ISO messages enabled their core processing systems to send additional address information, which led to additional exceptions on the receiving banks’ sanction systems.

“A payment might have been flowing through for years successfully. Now, it suddenly had another line of address which had something that would trigger sanctions review,” Sullivan said. “So that was really interesting.”

The Benefits and Challenges of Embracing ISO 20022

One of the many improvements to ISO 20022 will include having structured addresses to improve the sanctions scanning scenario. With this improvement, banks will be able to make a clear distinction between a street and a country.

“There is a massive spreadsheet that the BMPG has put together country by country, which indicates where to map the various elements of an address for each country,” Sullivan said. “It’s quite impressive. That is a big hope, a big advantage, that people believe will happen with ISO.”

Corporations will greatly benefit from implementing ISO 20022 when it comes to their accounts receivable and accounts payable departments. When a company pays another for a certain amount different from the invoiced amount, the explanation will be given and accessed easily.

Ultimately, to benefit the end user, Sullivan believes that fintechs and banks must work together.

“The banks and the fintechs have got to collaborate on providing tools both for customers to seamlessly provide that information when they’re initiating a payment and for the bank to be able to send that information back to them,” she said. “Because both of those channels are very oriented towards the existing SWIFT and Fedwire.”

The challenge, Sullivan pointed out, is for the banks and the fintechs to come up with the best solutions to make it easier on customers.

It’s also dependent on who’s ISO-ready and who isn’t.

“We’re all happy to report that most countries are going to be live with the ISO standard by 2024,” Bodine said. “Some countries, however, have reported that they don’t plan on adopting ISO 20022 at all. Are those countries going to be in OK shape or out of the game—and are they going to just have a harder time transacting with the countries that are on the standard?”

Sullivan noted that it’ll be the latter. They’re likely to have a harder time transacting. But it will also vary by situation. “If they’re members of SWIFT, for example, they have to be able to support receiving that data,” Sullivan said. “Whether they pass it on to their customer is a different question.”

Current Limitations

As the financial industry moves forward with the implementation of ISO 20022, significant challenges must be addressed, including the current limitations posed by its legacy infrastructure.

These limitations can negatively affect the successful implementation of ISO 20022, leading to delays, inconsistencies, and a lack of interoperability.

“I saw one study that estimated that even at a medium-sized regional bank in the U.S., there were 200 different systems that could be impacted by ISO 20O22,” Sullivan said. “For banks to be able to leverage both a customer initiating and receiving all that data, there’s a lot of work to be done behind the scenes, and banks are going to be very creative. I don’t think many banks will attempt to tackle all 200 systems, but they will find ways to translate that and focus only on the most critical. That is going to be one of the challenges. You have all this data, but you’ve got to be able to ingest it, and you’ve got to be able to send it out.”

Enabling Banks to Embrace Iterations of Fedwire

To stay competitive, banks must adopt an API-first approach. This enables banks to open their systems to other third-party developers, which means more collaboration and faster innovation.

When it comes to high volume, APIs are more efficient, producing more throughput per second.

APIs also work well in the cloud, and more banks want to transition their processing there. However, with any new system that’s implemented, constant iteration is key.

“As payment rails grow and expand, I’m sure there will be tweaks made as they get more mature and we realize some of the mistakes that we’ve made along the way,” Sullivan said. “Our belief is the API provides that layer between whatever channels you have at a bank initiating payments or receiving payments and the actual networks.”

Considering the current legacy infrastructure panorama, having an API-first approach would seem to be the perfect solution. 

“Rather than having to take all these different message formats being spit out from 100 different systems, you feed them into the API and then it handles whatever the variations are,” Sullivan said. “Those systems don’t have to be aware of the different payment schemes, the different rules, the different timing.”

Final Takeaways

With the financial industry always evolving, it is critical that fintechs, banks, and other organizations stay abreast of the latest developments, especially when it comes to faster payments.

By adopting ISO 20022, organizations can ensure that payments will be faster, safer, and more transparent than ever. For most smaller banks and organizations, the implementation will not be without hurdles, especially when it comes to dealing with legacy infrastructures. Luckily, with APIs this impediment to adoption has been eliminated.

As with any new system, there will always be room for improvement. But it is a worthwhile journey on the coveted road to interoperability.

The post ISO 20022 Adoption Has Its Challenges, but Advantages Outweigh Them appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Payment industry pundits and politically motivated legislators should look at the complexities found in Regulation II. Furthermore, they should look at it before they start pushing the Durbin-Marshall Credit Reform Act. You can read more about Regulation II at this recently published Mercator Viewpoint, titled “Debit Regulation II Clarification.”

The Electronic Payments coalition recently posted a letter from the American Bankers Association and every state banking association. It discussed the flaws in the upcoming attempt to impose credit card price controls. Durbin 1.0 brought redundant processing requirements to debit cards. Some of the stress points in Durbin 1.0 will likely bleed over to credit cards if the legislation is successful.

Regulation II will impact more than just large banks.

ABA Letter to Congress on Durbin 2 and Regulation II

According to the ABA letter to Congress:

• This legislation doubles down on the harm already caused by the Durbin Amendment. A recent GAO report found that the Durbin Amendment was “among the top five laws and regulations most cited…as having significantly affected the cost and availability of basic banking services.”

• It also came with broken promises, specifically from merchants that stated this regulation would result in savings for consumers. Not surprisingly, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, after the Durbin Amendment was implemented, 98.8% of merchants failed to pass-through savings realized from debit regulation to consumers, and over 20% increased prices.

There Is a Place for Every Consumer in Payments and FIs of Any Size

As the ABA letter indicates, “Our credit card processing system is the most efficient in the world. It moves millions of dollars a second with 99.999% reliability and remains hardened against security intrusions and data theft. It provides protections like zero-dollar fraud liability for consumers and guaranteed retail payments.”

They take care of implementing the complicated and expensive 24/7, 365 infrastructure. And credit card interchange largely finances it. Over 5,000 credit card issuers are marketing directly to consumers, demonstrating plenty of competition, as confirmed by metrics used by the FTC and DOJ and a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision where no justice found evidence of an anti-competitive market structure.

Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

The post Wrestling with Durbin 2 and Regulation II appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

OMAHA, Neb.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In response to the everchanging technology and payment processing landscapes, payments software applications provider BHMI announced Concourse Release 4.15, the latest version of its industry-leading Concourse Financial Software Suite^®, the powerful, modular back office software solution for electronic payments processing.

Concourse’s integrated collection of products manages back office processing for all types of electronic payments, including credit, debit, prepaid and P2P transactions. The suite’s adaptable architecture supports all processing functions including settlement, reconciliation, fees processing and disputes workflow management resulting in reduced costs and improved operational efficiencies.

Concourse Release 4.15 offers a wide array of operational and session management improvements to address customer requests and to meet the needs of the payments marketplace, including:

• Enhanced system monitoring via expansive statistics collection and rules-based performance tracking
• New security management enhancements, including:
  • Refined browser access management to control access to Concourse installations
  • Strong password security handling that transcends industry standards
  • Powerful data shredding capabilities to ensure true deletion of sensitive information on Concourse managed files
• Enhanced processing of payments disputes, including feature and performance upgrades to:
  • Visa RTSI Disputes modules
  • Discover acquirer disputes loaders
  • AMEX acquirer disputes loaders
  • MasterCom Claims Manager (MCM) modules, including support for Colombia domestic disputes processing
• System platform and database upgrades to give customers greater operational flexibility

“The payment ecosystem is constantly evolving, and today’s companies require the most flexible, adaptable products available to evolve with it,” said Susie Swenson, Concourse Product Manager at BHMI. “At BHMI, we spend a lot of time studying the industry shifts, but more importantly, listening to our customers to craft the best solution that can meet their needs now and in the future. We feel we’ve captured that with this latest release of Concourse.”

Concourse customers interested in learning how the new features may be applicable to their specific environments should contact BHMI for a detailed discussion.

About BHMI
BHMI is a leading provider of product-based software solutions focused on the back office processing of electronic payment transactions. The company is best known as the creator of the Concourse Financial Software Suite^® – a unique integrated collection of back office products that allow companies to adapt to the rapidly changing world of payments quickly and easily. Concourse is a cohesive and integrated package, including settlement, reconciliation, fees processing, and disputes workflow management, that reduces the cost and complexity of back office processing. Concourse’s continuous processing, near real-time architecture and powerful rules engine are ideally suited for new payment initiatives like P2P and enable companies to perform back office processing for any type of payment transaction. To learn more about BHMI, please visit www.bhmi.com.

The post BHMI Announces Latest Enhancements to Industry Leading Back Office Payments Solution – Concourse Financial Software Suite appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

For years, accounts payable processes have been steadily moving towards digitalization and automation. The benefits of making the transition away from paperless are clear: efficiency, cost reduction, greater cash flow visibility and control. However, finding the right solution for ePayments innovation can be challenging for businesses.  

To take an in-depth look at the common issues that should be addressed when CFOs, senior finance executives, controllers, and accounts payable teams assess their AP systems, Nvoicepay recently released a whitepaper, The Executive’s Guide for Evaluating Electronic Payments Solutions. 

Obstacles to the pursuit of AP automation 

Businesses have made efforts to automate their accounts payable processes for decades. However, many organizations have found that the transition to ePayments brings unnecessary complexity, limited flexibility, increased workloads, and the disappointing realization that, despite the changing times, most AP payments are still conducted via physical printed checks. An April 2021 report from Mercator showed that small businesses are particularly worried about AP inefficiencies, with 45% of those surveyed agreeing that they are overly reliant on non-automated payment processes, and 49% believing that difficulties with bookkeeping management limited their growth. It is probable that SMBs, SMEs, and large enterprises share at least some of these concerns.  

There are several underlying causes for these roadblocks on the path to successful implementation of electronic payment solutions: 

• Disparate payment processes 
• Lack of supplier enablement 
• Supplier information maintenance 
• Payment error breakdown 

• Rigid file processing rules 
• Limited card volume rates 

These six pitfalls are quite common among both small businesses and enterprise businesses. By looking through the entire lifecycle of the accounts payable process, businesses can determine where the various pinch points occur. Maybe superfluous energy is being directed towards managing multiple payment flows, or there is not a careful enough system for keeping track of how to enable suppliers for payment. Or perhaps there is a flaw in the payment process, either resulting in a missed batch of payments, fraudulent transactions, or a headache from a customer service and public relations point-of-view, or all three. Electronic payment solutions can deliver a range of functionality and features to address these concerns. 

Choosing the right solution for your business 

The end goal of any electronic payment solution should be uncomplicated and effective AP processing. Many businesses may be distracted by flashier, higher-level features – but until the nuts and bolts requirements of a working payments infrastructure are met, those more advanced concerns should not be prioritized. After all, AP software should be an asset for smooth operations, and not a point of friction.  

To ensure that an ePayment solution drives AP efficiencies, reduces costs, and enables 100% electronic payments, there are several key attributes to consider: 

• Single, simple workflow 
• End-to-end payment support 
• Flexibility and control 
• Payment optimization 

• Supplier enablement and information management 

The bottom line is that businesses must continuously monitor their AP processes. Automated controls can help businesses do everything from flag potential instances of fraud to guarantee optimized payments that deliver the greatest return to the customer. Any chosen solution should streamline payments, drive information visibility, and ease the human burden of maintenance. Security, efficiency, and flexibility are the bedrock of business continuity.  

Intelligent payments from Nvoicepay 

In a world where a myriad of requirements and expectations are holding finance teams back, Nvoicepay is transforming payments processes across the board. There is abundant opportunity for businesses to shift to a payment model driven by intelligent automation. The following characteristics are imperative for building a modern payment workflow: 

• Purpose-built to handle complexity 

• Dynamic supplier activation 
• Superior supplier experience 
• Remarkable results 

Nvoicepay can fulfill all of these needs and more. The secure Nvoicepay solution can meet the requirements of the most advanced organizations, get ePayments up and running quickly, and onboard suppliers while maintaining high satisfaction. By unlocking the value in payment processes, Nvoicepay delivers concrete improvements to businesses. 

To learn more about which common payment issues to avoid, how to evaluate ePayment needs, and why Nvoicepay can offer modern solutions, consider reading Nvoicepay’s whitepaper. 

Access Nvoicepay’s whitepaper, The Executive’s Guide for Evaluating Electronic Payment Solutions, by filling out the form below.  

The post How to Evaluate Electronic Payment Solutions appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In this release at Finextra we see that the Fed is now finally moving on its previously announced intention to adapt to ISO 20022 as the messaging format for Fedwire. COVID-19 related delays have slowed down this effort since it was announced in 2018. This would typically mean that the switchover might perhaps be in the 2023 range, although rather than occurring in stages, it would be a ‘big bang’ event, and possibly connected to the initial launch of FedNow. We have been tracking the need for banks to modernize their infrastructure, advising members through research, and this transition is one of the catalysts for such re-thinking of basic approaches to payments for many institutions.

‘The change will allow for enhanced efficiency of both domestic and cross-border payments, and a richer set of payment data that may help banks and other entities comply with sanctions and anti-money laundering requirements….The Board also invited public comment on a revised plan for migrating the Fedwire Funds Service to the new message format. Specifically, the Board is proposing that the Reserve Banks adopt the new message format on a single day, rather than in three separate phases as previously proposed.’

It was also previously announced that TCH (CHIPS) and the Fed were working together on the transition, which makes sense given the settlement accounts involved. Therefore, all users of these rails (which is any bank initiating a wire transfer, either directly or through a correspondent bank or other service) will need to start serious prep for the event.

‘The Fedwire Funds Service is a real-time gross settlement system owned and operated by the Federal Reserve Banks. It enables businesses and financial institutions to transfer funds quickly and securely….The ISO 20022 format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization, which is an independent, non-governmental organization that publishes standards for a broad range of industries….Comments are due 90 days after publication in the Federal Register, which is expected shortly. ‘

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Fed Invites Comments on Shift to ISO 20022 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.