Financial news

Since its launch on 20 July 2023, the FedNow instant payment service developed by the Federal Reserve has seen over 50 financial institutions participate in the scheme. The latest to develop and launch a pack on the scheme is Icon Solutions with its Icon Payments Framework (IPF).

The FedNow Service enables banks to provide innovative instant payment services to customers. It ensures recipients have full access to funds immediately, allowing for greater financial flexibility. Especially, when making time-sensitive payments. US banks can work with Icon Solutions to perform a FedNow readiness assessment. In doing so, they can understand the requirements, build the business case and define a strategy for integration in line with their objectives.

Complete with its latest scheme pack for FedNow, the IPF is enabling successful payments transformation for banks worldwide.

“US banks have an ongoing challenge to balance their IT priorities,” comments Donal Fleming, CTO at Icon Solutions. “On the one hand, they have near-term requirements like FedNow compliance and ISO20022. On the other they have long-term strategies around driving innovation, improving CX and reducing costs. Often, the pressures of the former delay the latter as banks have realised that the home-built or vendor-sourced applications they’ve used for decades are unsustainable and lack agility.

“Banks are often too dependent on solution vendors and can’t offer the latest functionality to customers quickly. With growing competition from other banks and fintechs, US banks need partners that give them more control over payment solutions, not less. These are complex challenges and we are here to help banks meet them head on. Furthermore, banks can take on scheme compliance at pace, allowing them to move on other priorities that cut costs and grow revenues.”

How IPF helps banks

IPF, a low-code, cloud-native, open-source framework, allows banks to develop their own payment processing solutions. Scheme packs enable IPF customers to quickly integrate with various payment schemes without any development work, significantly reducing time to market and integration costs.

Importantly for US banks, Icon’s low-code software development kit (SDK) enables them to continue working with existing solution integrators to develop, implement and customise their solutions. This approach enables banks to leverage Icon’s payments strategy and architecture pedigree. All the while the banks maintain control, flexibility and agility to independently address their specific business requirements over time. It also minimises vendor technology lock-in.