Smarter Faster Payments 2025: Key insights from the field

As payments innovation continues to evolve, our team recently attended Nacha’s Smarter Faster Payments 2025 conference in New Orleans to gain insights into the current state of the payments landscape. After making the rounds at several spring payments conferences, including the Faster Payments Council’s 2025 Spring Member Meeting and the 2025 Payments Canada SUMMIT, some clear themes have emerged that we believe are worth sharing.

Real-time payments: The adoption disconnect

At the conference, we observed a persistent imbalance between receiving and sending capabilities across financial institutions. This imbalance makes it difficult to achieve many of the business cases and interoperability opportunities that real-time payments promise. Without robust send-and-receive infrastructure, use cases like shortening funding times on loans or enabling faster returns for online purchases remain challenging––or not impossible––to implement.

The result? Missed synergies that create a competitive disadvantage for traditional financial institutions, as customers increasingly turn to mobile-enabled and user-friendly alternatives such as PayPal, Venmo and Klarna that offer more seamless payment experiences. 

The business base challenge

Perhaps most telling was the feedback from attendees at the conference. Contrary to what might be expected at a smarter faster payments event, many conversations remained firmly anchored in traditional payment methods. What we found surprising was that approximately 90% of visitors to our event booth were inquiring about wires and Automatic Clearing House (ACH) rather than real-time or instant payment solutions.

The fundamental question many financial institutions are still grappling with is straightforward: "What is the business case for real-time payments?" Without a compelling answer (e.g., instant funding of bank loans or instant returns on debit card payments), many banks remain hesitant to invest in the more complex sending capabilities required for a complete real-time payment solution.

The global perspective

What makes this situation particularly noteworthy is how it contrasts with global payment trends. In markets like the U.K., India and Brazil, real-time or instant payments have seen rapid adoption, with the vast majority of these transactions being peer-to-peer or consumer/person-to-business. In Brazil specifically, the Pix instant payment system has begun to cannibalize the debit card market, as consumers find it more convenient to use QR codes for payments.

Meanwhile, in the U.K., the Faster Payments Service (FPS) has become so embedded that it now represents the default payment method for consumers making transfers under certain limits, completely bypassing traditional ACH or wire transfers in favor of immediate settlement. 

This global contrast highlights a uniquely American approach to payment innovation that may be limiting progress.

The Same Day ACH factor

Another interesting dimension to the U.S. payments landscape is the role of Same Day ACH. While this service has provided a stepping stone toward faster payments, it may inadvertently slow the adoption of true real-time capabilities.

"Why do I need a real-time rail when ACH does same-day settlement?" is a question many financial institutions are asking. The incremental improvement of Same Day ACH may be enough to satisfy immediate customer demands without requiring investment in new infrastructure.

This approach stands in stark contrast to global payment trends, where same-day settlement for ACH transactions is virtually non-existent in other markets. This uniquely American solution may be creating confusion in the U.S. market and may hinder broader adoption of real-time payment systems, as the U.S. embraces cross-border real-time payments.

The consumer focus gap

Many U.S. financial institutions appear to be overlooking the consumer side of real-time payments. While the current focus is largely on business applications (B2B and B2C), this emphasis risks underestimating the significant impact and adoption potential of consumer use cases, which remain underexplored and underdeveloped.

This perspective aligns with what we've seen globally, where consumer adoption has often driven broader payment innovation. By focusing too narrowly on business applications, U.S. financial institutions may be missing a significant opportunity.

Emerging use cases

Despite these challenges, several promising use cases for real-time payments were highlighted at the conference:

• Consumer payments: Instant bill payments, peer-to-peer transfers and tax payments
• Business payments: Supplier payments continue to lead adoption
• Financial institution services: Instant fund transfers, cross-border transactions and loan disbursements
• Industry-specific applications: Insurance claim payouts, premium payments, medical payments and refunds for medical billing
• Government payments: The U.S. government will stop issuing paper checks on September 30, 2025, meaning that all payments (e.g., Social Security) will become electronic

The path forward

As the U.S. payments landscape evolves, several key challenges remain:

1. Business case development: Financial institutions need clearer value propositions for real-time payment investments, particularly on the sending side.
2. User community engagement: Whether the community is B2B, consumers or something in between, real-time adoption will remain slow without their input. 
3. Industry alignment: Greater coordination among key players—including The Clearing House, the Federal Reserve, and Nacha—could help drive consistent messaging and standards.
4. Global integration: As cross-border real-time payments become inevitable, U.S. financial institutions will need to align more closely with global standards and practices to be competitive in supporting the needs of their increasingly global customer base.

Although the path to widespread real-time payment adoption in the U.S. may be longer than initially expected, the global trajectory suggests it's only a matter of time before faster payments become the norm rather than the exception. Forward-thinking financial institutions should prepare now for this inevitable shift. 

To learn more about CGI’s deep expertise in financial services and payments solutions, contact us.