>The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act to serve as the nation's central bank. The Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., is an agency of the federal government and reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress.
It’s absolutely not a government agency but also absolutely not privately owned. It’s best thought of as a non-governmental entity that is strongly influenced—and sanctioned—by the government, but does not operate underneath it.
This is why e.g. the Fed and Treasury negotiated how losses fell from the Main Street lending program. And if you visit a Fed, one of the first things their employees like to point out is that they’re NOT federal employees.
The closest analogy is that it's a co-op:
> Some observers mistakenly consider the Federal Reserve to be a private entity because the Reserve Banks are organized similarly to private corporations. For instance, each of the 12 Reserve Banks operates within its own particular geographic area, or District, of the United States, and each is separately incorporated and has its own board of directors. Commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System hold stock in their District's Reserve Bank. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. In fact, the Reserve Banks are required by law to transfer net earnings to the U.S. Treasury, after providing for all necessary expenses of the Reserve Banks, legally required dividend payments, and maintaining a limited balance in a surplus fund.
If they decide immediately, it can go faster, but they don't have to, and many banks have no incentive to work on processing faster.
They could still use a batch processing system, and just process the batches once per hour, or half hour, or whatever. It would still be slower than some newly-designed instant payments system, but could potentially be more palatable within the current system.
Not sure I agree. How about the incentive to prevent customers using competing services like Venmo and others?
Also the incentive to quickly receive funds into bank coffers so the bank can lend it faster.
Presumably, increasing the ACH batch frequency would break something in the system or it would already have been done.