I recently had the opportunity to attend the Faster Payments Council (FPC) 2026 Spring Member Meeting, where conversations across the industry made one thing clear: instant payments are no longer an emerging concept — they’re here, operational and continuing to evolve.
In addition to the formal sessions, several side conversations added a valuable perspective. While this isn’t a comprehensive recap, I wanted to share a few key takeaways that I believe are especially relevant for our members.
Adoption Is Maturing
One of the strongest signals from the event was that financial institutions aren’t choosing between the RTP® Network and the FedNow® Service; they’re increasingly supporting both. When asked who is actively participating in instant payments, many indicated they are live on both payment rails.
For financial institutions still evaluating instant payments, the conversation is shifting from whether to adopt to how to do it effectively. Some of the most important questions for organizations to ask include:
- Who are we serving?
- What are our goals?
- What risks are we comfortable with?
- How strong are our controls?
- Do we prioritize speed or flexibility?
These are critical considerations, as implementation goes far beyond simply enabling a new payment rail.
Implementation Realities: Expectations vs. Experience
A recurring theme throughout the event was the gap between industry expectations and operational reality when implementing instant payments.
Commonly underestimated implementation challenges include:
- Operational readiness,
- Fraud posture adjustments and
- Liquidity governance.
Immediate revenue impact continues to be overestimated in the early stages of adoption, as financial outcomes typically develop after foundational operational capabilities are in place. What’s becoming clear is that success with instant payments depends on building the right operational foundation rather than expecting quick financial returns.
Infrastructure Is Evolving
Insights from larger RTP® Network senders highlighted how transaction behavior is changing:
- High-value transactions are reaching the $10 million limit
- Transaction “bursts” require systems to process spikes while maintaining sub-second speeds
- Many financial institutions are using “shadow ledgers” to support real-time activity alongside legacy batch systems
For those familiar with traditional banking, this functions similarly to a memo-posting system, bridging the gap between real-time payments and batch-based cores.
Cards Still Compete
Despite the growth of instant payments, cards (particularly direct-to-debit) remain a strong competitor, with roughly 30% year-over-year growth.
Opportunities are expanding in areas like early wage access and cross-border payments, where organizations like Visa® are investing heavily. Notably, cross-border growth is extending beyond business-to-business (B2B) into business-to-consumer (B2C) use cases, such as paying international employees.
This reinforces a key reality: while instant payments are growing, existing card rails are still deeply embedded and highly incentivized.
AI: Still Early in Practice
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to generate significant interest, but practical adoption remains limited at the financial institution level.
Much of the progress is being driven by technology providers embedding capabilities into their platforms—particularly around exception processing and routing. In many cases, these tools lean more toward machine learning than true AI.
While some are hesitant to implement AI into their organizations, some embrace it, and very few use it to transform their business.
What This Means for EPCOR
From my perspective, a few priorities stand out:
- Support our members with practical, operational guidance on instant payments
- Help financial institutions balance innovation with risk management
- Monitor how competing payment rails influence adoption decisions
- Help members maintain compliance on any rail via audits and risk assessments
The pace of change in payments continues to accelerate. Instant payments, evolving technologies and shifting use cases are reshaping expectations across the industry.
For our members, success will come from staying informed, asking the right questions and building strategies that are both forward-thinking and operationally sound.
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