WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve is set to launch a long-awaited faster payments system next year, a step that officials say will modernize an outmoded infrastructure and ensure that near-instant payments become widely available.
The new system would allow bill payments, paychecks and other common consumer or business transfers to be available quickly and round-the-clock, a change from an existing system that is closed on weekends and can at times take several days before funds become available. Last year, those older rails handled more than 29 billion payments, valued at close to $73 trillion.