Dec. 7, 2020 – The
U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), in partnership with
Glenbrook Partners, today released results from the
2nd annual Faster Payments Barometer. As part of its ongoing mission to understand, influence, and drive the industry toward a ubiquitous faster payments system, the FPC conducted the latest survey of payments system stakeholders to gauge their views on a variety of topics related to faster payments in the United States.
This year’s Faster Payments Barometer was widely circulated and received well over 600 responses from a broad array of payments stakeholder segments including financial institutions, core processors, payment network operators, business end users, acquirers, fintechs, and more. The survey was conducted earlier this Fall.
The 2020 Faster Payments Barometer shows that faster payments are considered a “must have” for
75% of respondents’ organizations. This is reflected in the results, as
77% of those surveyed either use or enable at least one faster payment method today. And whether or not respondents have faster payments in place now,
74% are planning to implement at least one additional faster payments system within the next two years.
Surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has not impacted the majority of respondents’ plans to implement faster payments with
59% stating it has had no impact. According to the Barometer results, nearly
4 in 5 respondents are either accelerating or maintaining their faster payments implementation plans despite the current pandemic environment.
“The results from this year’s Faster Payments Barometer illustrate that more and more organizations are seeing the value of faster payments,” said FPC Executive Director Reed Luhtanen. “Although we are gaining ground, there is still much to be done to further advance faster payments in the United States. The FPC is leading the industry efforts to tackle issues that may be barriers to adoption and our members continue to move us closer to our goal of ubiquitous faster payments through dialogue, problem solving, and collaboration.”
Insights into the top use cases for faster payments provide guidance on where the industry should focus its efforts. The Barometer survey found that
disbursements/payouts is currently a top use case across all faster payments systems. In terms of future use cases,
consumer bill pay is the next most prominent use case for which respondents plan to leverage a faster payments system.
Similar to last year, a large majority (
92%) of those surveyed felt it is very important (
71%) or at least somewhat important (
21%) to be able to achieve interoperability across systems to support continued faster payments adoption and use. Nearly three quarters (
73%) of respondents also believe dispute resolution should be an inherent feature of any faster payments system, further reaffirming results from the 2019 survey.
While it is clear that faster payments continue to gain momentum, there are still issues hindering adoption rates. Survey respondents cited lack of interoperability across all systems (
48%), high upfront costs and complexity to implement (
44%), and internal business justification (
34%) as the top three challenges to faster payments adoption for their organization.
Despite these challenges, many respondents intend to move forward with faster payments implementation and think the United States is heading in the right direction. Close to half of this year’s survey respondents (
49%) believe we are making steady progress towards faster payments adoption, which represents an 8% increase over last year’s figure.
“Insights from the Faster Payments Barometer indicate that stakeholders across the payments ecosystem welcome the FPC’s value in bringing the industry together,” said Beth Horowitz Steel, partner at Glenbrook Partners. “They are looking for even greater collaboration to fast-track the industry’s approach to faster payments use case development and overall market adoption by financial institutions, businesses, and consumers.”
For more information on the FPC, its current work efforts or to join, visit
FasterPaymentsCouncil.org.
Contact:
Elizabeth Grice
U.S. Faster Payments Council
720-737-7368
egrice@fasterpaymentscouncil.org
About the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC)
The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose vision is a world class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. By design, the FPC encourages a diverse range of perspectives and is open to all stakeholders in the U.S. payment system. Guided by principles of fairness, inclusiveness, flexibility and transparency, the FPC uses collaborative, problem-solving approaches to resolve the issues that are inhibiting broad faster payments adoption in this country. For more information, please visit
FasterPaymentsCouncil.org.