News that some of the largest banks in the country are working to link their respective person-to-person payment systems to support real-time money transfer network should be seen as a positive sign for digital cash proponents.
In order to compete with the immediacy and convenience of cash transactions, electronic versions have to, at minimum, replicate that experience. In this article Reuters, leading banks and solution developers are revealing some of their plans to make this kind of product a reality in the near future:
A link-up could be a key step toward revolutionizing the way consumers pay one another, like when roommates pay one another for rent. Electronic payments would cut banks’ processing costs by reducing the cash they have to handle and the checks they have to process. Over time, banks may also be able to boost revenue from electronic transactions by charging a nominal fee.
This potential alliance, however, at the moment omits other financial institutions. But Fiserv’s reach into a large segment of financial institutions could help make such a real-time system possible across a wide spectrum of banks in the United States, creating a more viable competitive product than we’ve seen coming out of the market to date.
Click here to read more from Reuters.
