The FPC will focus on collaborative problem-solving to address the issues that are currently inhibiting faster payments ubiquity. Below are 10 work groups the FPC has identified as its current priority focus areas. Please indicate one or more work groups that you or your organization’s delegate with relevant expertise would like to join. Work group members can expect to participate in monthly meetings, contribute to planning and execution of work products, and provide periodic progress reports to the FPC Board, the broader FPC membership, and external payments stakeholders. Expected time commitment for participating in a work group is 8-10 hours per month in addition to semiannual in-person FPC member meetings.
Mission & Scope
Engage FPC member organizations currently working on cross-border payments. Gather information/input on various models and the variety of use cases where there is a need or desire by consumers and businesses for real time payments across borders. Review and coordinate with other FPC Work Groups to determine what is needed to align the currently disparate local faster payment systems such that the long-term goal of cross-border interoperability may be achieved.
Objectives & Goals
Identify what the industry needs to do in the cross-border space to create the environment necessary for faster cross-border payments.
Deliverables & Timeframes
The Group's work will be done in phases. Inceremental industry resources will be in the form of white papers, research reports, or opinion pieces on the following:
Membership Criteria
Technical Expertise preferred in managing, implementing, developing, or using cross border transactions, including ACH and debit/credit. Ability to synthesize research into summary findings. Open to representatives from all segments, but ideal to have representatives from financial institutions, technology providers, and end users, at a minimum.
Mission & Scope
Map out how digital assets relate to the financial industry, focusing specifically on payments made with digital funds – central bank digital currency (CBDC), regulated liabilities and stablecoin. Establish advantages of using digital assets in conjunction with faster payments and identify benefits to instantaneously transact and transfer digital funds within the U.S. Boundaries on the scope of effort are limited to the movement and storage of digital assets that use faster payments to purchase digital funds or to pay with digital funds, and it excludes investments. The Digital Assets Work Group will collaborate with Cross-Border and Fraud Work Groups in subject areas that overlap.
Objectives & Goals
This work group will develop a real-time recurring workflow for faster payments that can be used in any applicable use case. We will identify current approaches, applicable uses cases, best practices, and implementation guidance documentation. Publishing the results that can be used by the faster payments community.
Definition of Digital Assets
Digital Assets to Support Faster Payments
Deliverables
Membership Criteria
Background or strong interest/enthusiasm in digital assets in the financial industry, or experience with faster payments in a digital currency environment would be helpful. Prefer to have broad representation from industry segments including financial institutions, business end-users, payment network operators, payment processors, and consumer groups.
Mission & Scope
Engage stakeholders to assess friction points and establish best practices to support ubiquitous directory capabilities. Work with industry stakeholders to enable interoperability and leverage directories to promote the adoption of faster payments.
The Directory Models Work Group will focus on directories as they relate to faster payments consistent with the definitions accepted by the U.S. Faster Payments Council. Particularly, scope will be limited to schemes supporting push transactions between accounts with immediate (or at a minimum same day) funds availability per transaction.
Objectives & Goals
Deliverables & Timeframes
Membership Criteria
Open to any US Faster Payments Council member. The Work Group will make every effort to include those individuals involved in directory-type of businesses today.
Mission & Scope
Develop an educational and awareness program to foster better understanding of faster payments and confidence among providers and users, ultimately driving adoption and transaction volumes toward the industry goal of ubiquity.
Objectives & Goals
The work group will determine the best method to develop a cross-solution education and awareness program that aligns with the FPC's higher level strategies and priorities.
This effort will include surveying existing educational materials according to audience (consumer and business end-users, financial institutions, other service providers, etc.) to identify gaps and opportunities for faster payments information; determining opportunities for collaboration/partnerships with existing organizations; establishing a continuous assessment to ensure education and awareness materials are produced in an efficient manner; reaching the intended audiences; and helping reduce market misperceptions/confusion and drive adoption of faster payments.
Deliverables & Timeframes
Membership Criteria
Background or strong interest/enthusiasm in the area of educational materials, marketing strategies or PR for the payments industry desired. Must have broad representation from industry segments including financial institutions, business end-users, payment network operators, fintechs, and consumer groups.
Mission & Scope
Provide a blueprint for leveraging faster payments to accelerate access to the financial system for unbanked and underserved Americans. Scope includes unbanked and underserved consumers as well as small businesses in the United States, with a focus on domestic payments.
Objectives & Goals
Deliverables & Timeframe
Deliverables flowing out of July 2022 Financial Inclusion Report.
Membership Criteria
Those with direct or indirect experience in this are would be primary contributors. Those planning to work with underserved or are just interested to learn more about this segment of the economy would also be welcome. Financial Institutions, FinTechs, companies with demonstrated track record, that are passionate about financial equality or what to learn more about this segment of the economy and/or mission alignment in providing products and service or advocacy, coaching, and/or education for the unbanked.
Mission & Scope
Mission is to engage in collaborative efforts related to faster payments fraud.
Objectives & Goals
Deliverables & Timeframes
Information sharing
Education
Prevention and Mitigation (Future)
Law and regulation (Future)
Membership Criteria
Those with a background or strong interest/enthusiasm in the education for fraud and experience with faster payments. Prefer to have broad representation from industry segments including financial institutions, business end-users, payment network operators, payment processors, and consumer groups.
Mission & Scope
Provide financial institutions with guideposts to effectively manage operational change that instant and immediate payments have on bank operations. The scope of the work group is receive-side of the internal bank operation that has instant and immediate payment processes in place.
Objectives & Goals
This work group will develop a real-time recurring workflow for faster payments that can be used in any applicable use case. We will identify current approaches, applicable uses cases, best practices, and implementation guidance documentation. Publishing the results that can be used by the faster payments community.
Deliverables
Membership Criteria
Background or strong interest/enthusiasm in bank operations, developing educational materials, and experience with instant or immediate payments desired. Prefer to have broad representation from industry segments including financial institutions, payment network operators, payment processors, and consumer groups.
Mission & Scope
Describe how payment QR codes can facilitate adoption and usage of faster payments and provide considerations and recommended best practices for end users and financial institutions. Other potential methods for initiating payments are outside the scope of this work group.
Objectives & Goals
The work group will provide a brief review of payment QR codes and reference implementations. It will identify and describe faster payment use cases whose adoption may be improved by using QR Code as the initiator. The use case descriptions will be accompanied by recommendations for best practices and any related stakeholder considerations.
Deliverables
1. Publish a report for all users of faster payments systems around the following subjects.
a. Introduction to QR codes for faster payments.
i. Brief review of payment QR codes.
ii. Example implementations of payment QR codes.
b. Suggest with some justification which use cases may best assist in the adoption of faster payments in the U.S.
c. Describe the top use cases incorporating QR Code to facilitate faster payments.
i. Recommend best practices for use.
ii. Provide stakeholder considerations, benefits, and impacts.
Mission & Scope
Promote the development and adoption of real-time recurring payment solutions to be used by business end-users and financial institutions. Included in the scope of this mission is the development of use cases relating to: ecommerce recurring, utility payments, investment account funding, other forms of recurring billing. Excluded in this scope are adhoc one-time payments or payments where the customer is expected to initiate or be directly involved with each transaction.
Objectives & Goals
This work group will develop a real-time recurring workflow for faster payments that can be used in any applicable use case. We will identify current approaches, applicable uses cases, best practices, and implementation guidance documentation. Publishing the results that can be used by the faster payments community.
Deliverables & Timeframe
Address Fraud and Risk concerns around real-time recurring payments for merchants as well as large and small financial institutions; hone-on on authentication and visit irrevocability concerns, leveraging analysis performed by other FPC work groups (e.g., Fraud, Directory Models, API) as applicable.
1) Generate areas of research through lens of recurring faster payments.
a. Current pain points, channel orientation.
b. Real-time recurring payment use case walk through, focusing on authentication requirements from the user perspective.
c. Market drivers for authentication and need for authentication in real-time recurring payments.
d. Consumer and merchant liability concerns.
e. Emerging scheme rules as they relate to addressing risk for real-time recurring payments.
2) Output deliverable (2023) - Published opinion piece based on secondary research and FPC work group members experiences.
Membership Criteria
Membership should represent a variety of industries, requiring a background and understanding in billing/payment processes. Representation will be needed from merchant/end-users along with bank and financial institutions. Operators of faster payments systems including TCH and the Federal Reserve are also encouraged to participate. Members should have the ability to pull technical SMEs within their organization, when needed.
Mission & Scope
Develop guidelines and best practices for the use of secure APIs for enrolling/onboarding users and for the initiation of instant and immediate payments, regardless of the network used.
Objectives & Goals
Deliverables
Membership Criteria
Participants should bring either the relevant perspectives regarding the needs and desires of their organization as well as the authority to speak on behalf of their organization. Additionally, the work group will require members with strong technical knowledge regarding the development of payments APIs and members with strong technical knowledge regarding the message specifications, data elements, etc. required to transact on all instant payments networks.