Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director, FPC
I am still captivated coming out of our Spring Member Meeting that took place in late March. We were able to ask tough questions around cross-border faster payments, fraud, what the future holds, and more, and gain valuable expert perspectives in response.
For instance, in the Financial Inclusion and Cross-Border Payment Trends: Opportunities and Challenges session, we sought answers to “why are we where we are” when it comes to cross-border transactions. According to Anthony Serio, Chief Risk Officer at Sphere Labs it’s essentially because “legacy systems breed legacy thinking” insinuating that new innovative technology is what’s going to help us transform cross-border payments. Mark Graves of Conduit agrees. “Blockchain is one of the better answers we have right now. It’s because you can do peer-to-peer-messaging. It’s validated by independent third parties. It’s immutable once it’s put onto the blockchain. And it happens in seconds. Ultimately at the end of the day, I think it’s the answer.”
In the session titled As Money Moves Faster, So Does Fraud: How Strategic Friction in the Process Can Mitigate Nefarious Activities, we pursued the answer to the “why” and “how” around fraud. “Is it the speed or is it something else that is proliferating fraud” was a question posed by moderator Adam Goller, EVP, Head of Fintech Banking at Cross River. Based on the perspective of Ravi Loganathan, President of Sonar, "With fraudsters using advanced AI tools and exploiting hacked consumer data, the specific payment rail or instrument is becoming less crucial in fraud detection. Instead, we need to understand the counterparties involved in transactions in real time. This can be achieved by combining intrinsic signals, such as device and behavioral biometrics, with extrinsic signals like names and addresses. Integrating these elements allows us to develop a comprehensive approach to assessing transaction risk."
We also explored “what’s next” for faster payments. In the What’s Now and What’s Next in Faster Payments: An Update from the Network Operators session, Dan Baum, SVP, Head of FedNow® Product for the Federal Reserve, shared, “We’ve got a lot of energy in this country. And what we have to do is connect all of that energy in the value chain in such a way that we can get from end user to end user with use cases that drive value. Once we start driving value and bringing it to the American consumer and American businesses, I think then you get the snowball effect.”
We even asked questions of ourselves, as an organization. Mike Bilski, FPC Chairperson and CEO of North American Banking Company, challenged us to consider what’s next for the FPC. Mike suggested that the FPC consider whether we can help achieve our vision of a payments system where anyone can pay anyone else anytime with immediate funds availability by developing rules that would govern various aspects of the payments process and standards to streamline the adoption of faster payments for different use cases.
As you can see, we unpacked a lot at the Spring Member Meeting. And this is just a sampling of the questions presented and perspectives shared around some of the most pressing challenges and considerations facing the future of faster payments today. We will continue to unpack these topics at our Fall Member Meeting, taking place September 30 – October 1, in Denver, CO. Registration is now open to members and session proposals are being accepted. Learn more at https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/events/1753/FPC-2024-Fall-Member-Meeting.