PNC Joins FedNow to Expand Instant Payment Offerings

PNC has become the latest financial institution to join the FedNow® Service.

The bank announced its entry into the Federal Reserve-run service Tuesday (Oct. 21), saying it would allow it to send and receive instant payments around the clock.

“PNC Treasury Management has seen firsthand the transformative value immediate payments solutions can bring to organizations,” Sarah Billings, executive vice president and head of Global Payments for PNC Bank, said in a news release.

“Business models today are enabled by immediate payments, and we are committed to supporting the growth of the payments ecosystem across the U.S. By joining the FedNow payments network, we are driving value for clients.”

“Financial institutions like PNC Bank are accelerating the momentum behind instant payments and highlighting the transformative value they bring to businesses and consumers,” added Mark Gould, chief payments executive for Federal Reserve Financial Services. “Through joining the FedNow Service, PNC Bank helps strengthen our collective ability to deliver immediate and efficient payment solutions across the U.S.”

The release notes that “immediate payments” are enjoying rapid growth as “businesses prioritize speed, efficiency and customer satisfaction.” Since the launch of the Real Time Payments (RTP) network in 2017 and the FedNow Service in 2023, adoption of such payments has soared for things like emergency payroll, earned wage access, loan disbursements and gig economy payouts.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that offering such payment options can be critical for banks. When banks fail to deliver on this front for small businesses, 61% of these businesses say they turn to FinTechs for help.

And a third of small businesses said they would switch financial institutions just for access to real-time payment options.

In related news, PYMNTS spoke with Dan Anthony, executive vice president/chief information officer of FedNow, and Nilesh Dusane, global head of institutional payments at Amazon Web Services, about the way banks are seizing opportunities in instant payments.

“What we are seeing right now is by taking instant payments … banks have started to modernize their payment stack using cloud-native services on AWS,” Dusane said in an interview posted Tuesday.

“And that enables financial institutions to do all the things that Dan is talking about, which is faster time to market, building hyper-personalized services for [both retail and commercial customers and more],” he added.

Anthony told PYMNTS that adoption of the FedNow service is best measured in terms of reach and volume.

“We’ve increased to more than 1,400 participants on the network, from 35 at launch,” he said. “Our volume of transactions and our value of transactions are increasing by double- and triple-digit year on year. We’re north of 10x transaction volume increase year on year.”