The FPC will focus on collaborative problem-solving to address the issues that are currently inhibiting faster payments ubiquity. Below are eight 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
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.
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
Mission & Scope
Works with existing fraud sharing forums to identify enhancements that will make the current information sharing processes more efficient and effective, with an aim towards fostering better user experiences, bolstering confidence and trust in faster payments, facilitating faster reaction times to address threats to the ecosystem.
Objectives & Goals
Deliverables & Timeframes
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
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 with each phase building off the review and findings of the previous phase(s) through incremental industry updates.
1. Review the current and emerging cross-border payment initiatives especially Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) models.
a. Review the current CBDC studies and industry papers by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank and The Clearing House.
b. Identify areas of commonality and divergence in the different CBDC models and initiatives.
c. Identify the opportunities and concerns posed by CBDC’s models being proposed and implemented.
2. Provide recommendations to the FPC community on how to continually monitor new initiatives in cross border faster payments space such as CBDCs.
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
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
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
Create a detailed deliverable timeline data sources, orientation and resources for deliverables, and organization of subgroups. (Q1 2021)
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