FedNow Reports Strong Growth at Start of Year Two; U.S. Faster Payments Council Advises on Best Practices

By W.B. King

Designed as a “groundbreaking instant payments” platform for both businesses and individuals, FedNow celebrated its second year in late July. Chief FedNow Executive Nick Stanescu reports it’s not the terrible twos—quite the opposite.

“We currently have more than 1,400 participants, up from 900 banks and credit unions at our one-year anniversary, and the network keeps growing every day. Along with adoption, we’re seeing volume continue to rise, and the number of senders — ranging from the biggest banks to the small credit unions — steadily climbs,” he noted. As of July, the Federal Reserve reported that the Fedwire system settles roughly over $4.7 trillion in wire transfers each day.

“Even more exciting is the explosion of instant payment innovation emerging among financial institutions, payment processers and fintechs. Use cases (off-site), such as instant payroll, auto loan disbursements and digital wallet defunding, have started gaining a lot of traction,” Stanescu continued. “And we’re also seeing novel use cases crop up each day across a number of industries — real estate transactions, brokerage account defunding, insurance payouts and more.”

While attending recent industry conferences and events, Stanescu noted he has spoken to many executives about merchant refunds, account funding, healthcare payments, and small business and online marketplace payments. New use cases in these segments, he added, are likely to emerge over the next 12 to 18 months.

“I fully look forward to seeing unexpected use cases, because use cases very often bubble up in unpredictable ways. The FedNow Service is uniquely use-case agnostic, and that’s by design — a flexible structure encourages innovation across industries and the broader payments ecosystem,” he stated.

“We’re also seeing momentum building in the industry around request for payment (RFP), which is a feature the FedNow Service has had since launch,” he continued. “RFP is a way for a person or business to request an instant payment from another person or business. Increasingly, we’re going to see financial institutions start offering instant bill pay services that can help their customers conveniently send e-invoices, receive instant bill payments and better manage cash flow.”

Industry Feedback and Guidance 

Among entities advising FedNow is the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC) Board Advisory Group, which is composed of industry leaders with broad experience in payments who provide perspectives to help inform the FPC’s priorities and initiatives, explained Reed Luhtanen, FPC executive director and CEO.

Deepak Gupta, EVP product, engineering and services at Volante Technologies, has been reappointed to the 2026-2026 FPC Board Advisory Group. “Working alongside other leaders has reinforced my passion and commitment to tackling our industry’s most complex obstacles, especially the adoption of instant payment rails and accelerating compelling new consumer and business end user services for these networks,” Gupta stated. “I look forward to bringing forward my knowledge and industry experiences.” 

In August 2025, the Jersey City, N.J.-based Volante Technologies, a payments as a service (PaaS) provider for banks and credit unions, announced the successful migration of all customers to the ISO 20022 messaging format for the Fedwire Funds Service, which coincided with the July 14 ISO 20022 migration deadline. Gupta further explained that Volante customers now process more than $1.4 trillion daily, approximately 30% of total Fedwire values, through Volante’s ISO-native, mission-critical platform.

“Volante has invested in ISO 20022 modernization for over a decade now, and today our platform isn’t just ISO-compliant – it's ISO-native. Over the past two years, we’ve helped our customers strengthen the extensibility, scalability, and resiliency of their payments systems,” Gupta continued. “This approach made the transition seamless, and although many institutions anticipated challenges with the migration, every Volante customer was back to business-as-usual on day one of the go-live. In fact, one global money center bank even shared that they can now focus on long-term strategic goals much sooner than initially forecasted.”

Maintaining Instant Payment Technologies

As Stanescu looks forward, he said the FedNow team will continue to consider customer feedback, some of which is communicated through the “FedNow User Group” platform which includes participation from more than 600 financial institutions.

“One thing that stands out for our bank and credit union participants is they really appreciate the hands-on customer support from their relationship managers and the FedNow onboarding teams before, during and after they adopt the service. The onboarding experience is fully digital and streamlined,” he noted. “We also have a special developer site that makes it easy for participating financial institutions and service providers to browse, search and download information that allows them to build, implement and maintain instant payment technology.”