FedNow eyes cross‑border intermediaries

A payment that now moves money between United States banks in seconds may soon be allowed to take a detour through a middleman first. On April 8, 2026, the Federal Reserve proposed letting banks and credit unions use intermediaries to send funds through the FedNow Service. (federalreserve.gov) FedNow launched in July 2023 as the Federal Reserve’s instant-payments system for depository institutions in the United States. The service runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with immediate interbank settlement. (federalreserve.gov) Until now, the basic model was simple: a participating bank sent a payment order through FedNow directly to another participating bank. The new proposal would let a participant route that transfer through an intermediary other than a Federal Reserve Bank. (federalreserve.gov) The Federal Reserve’s own example is cross-border money movement. A United States bank could use FedNow for the domestic leg of a payment, while a correspondent bank or other intermediary handles the international leg. (federalreserve.gov) That sounds procedural, but it changes who can build on top of the rail. A payroll platform, business-payments provider, or remittance company could sit between the sending bank and the final overseas destination if a bank chooses to use it. (federalreserve.gov) (paymentsdive.com) The Federal Reserve is not turning FedNow into a global network in this proposal. The foreign bank in an outbound payment would still sit outside Regulation J’s FedNow framework, while the intermediary inside the United States would be the party receiving the FedNow payment order. (federalreserve.gov 1) (federalreserve.gov 2) That means the hard part shifts away from just connecting to FedNow. A provider now has to decide where to route the payment, how to convert currencies, how to screen names against sanctions lists, and how much prefunded money to keep in the right place at the right time. (paymentsdive.com) (federalreserve.gov) The Federal Reserve has been inching toward this for years. In March 2023, before FedNow even launched, Payments Dive reported that Federal Reserve officials were already considering cross-border enhancements for the system. (paymentsdive.com) The caution has been there too. In August 2024, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller warned that linking faster-payments systems across borders too quickly could increase fraud and money-laundering risk. (paymentsdive.com) So the likely winners are not the firms that merely offer a pipe into FedNow. The stronger position belongs to the firms that can combine rail access with fraud controls, sanctions checks, foreign-exchange handling, and settlement decisioning in one workflow. (paymentsdive.com) (federalreserve.gov) The proposal is open for public comment now through the Federal Reserve’s proposals process. If the rule is adopted after that comment period, a domestic instant-payments rail built for United States banks could become one piece of a much larger cross-border payments stack. (federalreserve.gov 1) (federalreserve.gov 2)