The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) is calling on the Federal Reserve to develop a real-time payments settlement system to avoid a megabank monopoly.
The Federal Reserve is uniquely positioned to provide equitable access to real-time payments, ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey wrote in a letter addressed to Fed Chair Jerome Powell. This will encourage innovation that will benefit customers, she added.
“Industry-wide ubiquity may never be achieved without the Federal Reserve developing and operating a real-time gross settlement system and interoperating with the private sector,” Romero Rainey wrote. “The Federal Reserve’s development and operation of a real-time gross settlement system would also insert needed competition into real-time payments.”