With Memorial Day behind us, and the unofficial start of summer in swing, it also feels like the faster payments industry is entering another season of growth and momentum. Adoption continues to increase, but so does the need for collaboration around the issues that matter most, especially fraud prevention and standards that support long-term success.
Fraud remains top of mind across the industry. If you saw one of my most recent LinkedIn articles, I spoke about the Merchant Risk Council’s latest 2026 Global eCommerce Payments & Fraud Report. The report found that 45% of organizations identified real-time payments fraud as the next biggest fraud attack overall. This is one of the reasons the Faster Payments Council’s recently released Guiding Principles for Instant Payments Fraud Dispute Resolution. The report is intended to provide guidance for designing dispute resolution frameworks related to instant payments fraud and scams. But more importantly, it reinforces the fact that a coordinated and consistent approach to addressing fraud across the payments ecosystem will be vital to ensuring trust in instant payments.
According to the report, the top guiding principle for dispute resolution is to “Recognize All Parties Have Important Roles in Mitigating Fraud and Scams.” All payment ecosystem participants, including financial institutions, merchants, networks, regulators, and senders and receivers, play a role in mitigating fraud and scams. The extent of that responsibility varies based on each party’s capabilities, role in the payment process, and use case. But they all must play a role to help mitigate fraud.
Additionally, the report indicates effective dispute resolution should “Promote Transparency and ISO 20022-Aligned Exchange of Information.” In other words, it is important that dispute-relevant data exchange be standardized and ISO 20022 messaging is a great way to ensure that. This would support predictable, consistent communication between sending and receiving institutions regardless of payment rail and without the need for interoperability.
These two guiding principles from the report underscore the need for greater coordination and consistency across the payments ecosystem. When stakeholders share a common framework for roles, responsibilities, and information exchange, they are better equipped to identify the fraud, resolve disputes, and respond to emerging threats.
And it’s that same coordinated and consistent mindset that is also behind the newly formed FPC-ASC X9 Joint Standards Steering Committee, which will help guide collaborative standards initiatives and provide strategic oversight as the faster payments landscape continues to evolve. Comprised of five representatives from the FPC and five from X9, the committee will help establish the common frameworks needed to improve information sharing, reduce friction across payment systems, and address many of the challenges, like fraud, that continue to hinder faster payments adoption.
As implied, this committee has a very important job. Standards may not be sexy, but they are foundational to growth. The work efforts coming out of this committee will be pivotal: They will help drive consistency, support interoperability, improve efficiency, strengthen security, and create greater confidence across the ecosystem to ensure faster payments can flourish.
Taken together, the FPC’s efforts with fraud prevention and standards development reflect where the industry is headed. Through collaboration, ongoing dialogue, and a willingness across the industry to solve challenges together, the FPC and its Members can build an ecosystem that is secure, trusted, and prepared for long-term growth and success.