The Faster Payments Task Force, assembled by the Federal Reserve, has released a new report which describes the background and process of the task force’s work and its motivation for pursuing faster payments solutions in the context of the current payments landscape.

Titled “The U.S. Path To Faster Payments”, the report is the part one of the final report. The Part-Two of the report would be released in mid-2017.

According to the report, with the shift of consumers and businesses to electronic payment methods, technological improvements are providing new opportunities for payment providers to implement faster and more user-friendly payment capabilities. This includes mobile device applications, APIs, Internet of Things and smart devices. The authors also noted the potential of upcoming innovative technology including digital currencies and blockchain technology and wrote:

“Digital currencies have the potential to change the payments landscape, particularly if adopted by one or more major central banks.”

“Distributed ledger technology (e.g. , blockchain) can potentially allow transactions to be verified and recorded across a distributed network of computers. This might change the roles of traditional players in payment clearing and settlement processes—for example, by eliminating the need for some types of centralized transaction bookkeeping.”

The report further said that faster payments have potential synergies with these technological advances. For benefiting from these trends, the payment industry needs to work together to identify effective approaches and opportunities for implementing safe, ubiquitous, and faster payment capabilities in the United States, it said.

In the Part-Two of the report, the task force will share its assessment of proposals for faster payments solutions, and recommend next steps for the industry to take to achieve safe, ubiquitous faster payments capabilities.