People First FCU to add FedNow send capabilities in 2025
FedNow has 1,163 FIs on its network as of Dec. 16
People First Federal Credit Union has joined the Federal Reserve’s real time payments network, FedNow, as a receiver and aims to expand its capabilities to include send functions to improve customer experience in 2025.
Prior to this expansion, the $930 million credit union had been looking to improve its fraud detection capabilities; it has done so by working with fintechs and vendors, Howard Meller, chief executive and president, told Bank Automation News.
“We plan on adding sending or origination capabilities in 2025 after improving our infrastructure,” Meller said.
When choosing among real-time payments capabilities, the Allentown, Pa.-based credit union implemented FedNow over The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network, Meller said, because of FedNow’s simpler onboarding process and user experience.
People First tapped payments service provider Vizo Financial to connect to the FedNow network in the third quarter. Leaning on tech vendors to add capabilities is a common strategy for the credit union due to its small size. It also taps the following vendors:
- Microsoft Azure for cloud services;
- NCR for ATM services; and
- Eltropy for digital banking services.
FedNow growth
FedNow has added 1,163 financial institutions to its network since its July 2023 launch, including BNY, JPMorgan, Legends Bank and Merco Credit Union, according to the Federal Reserve’s website on Dec. 16.
The demand for FedNow is expected to grow especially among smaller financial institutions due RTP’s affiliation with big banks, Heman Daswani, principal consultant at fintech Temenos, previously told BAN.
People First records 25 to 30 FedNow payments daily with an average payment size of $3,200, Meller said.
Payments from gig-workers at food delivery companies like Grubhub and paychecks from businesses are the two driving use cases for real time payments at People First, Meller said.
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