Has this lead to any user-visible changes? Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier, not having to worry about it arriving on time?
https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow-servic... maintains a list of banks and financial service providers currently on FedNow rails.
For at least ten years now.
You should visit America. It's nice.
> How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller?
> We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account.
https://info.bankofamerica.com/en/digital-banking/online-bil...
If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate.
As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure."
Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about.
Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check.
Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment).
But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases.
So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile.
In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close.
If you pay a bill on the 1st, the money does not land in the payees account that day (barring in person cash transactions). Best case scenario, funds are available on the 2nd to the payee, although, more commonly, it is several days before the funds are settled. Banks will frequently paper over this showing the funds where they will eventually go, but the clearing house still hasn't finished. If you try to spend too much of that unsettled money, the bank will be glad to inform you that the money isn't actually available yet.
When people talk about instant payments they mean a few seconds, not overnight -maybe.
I used to be in charge of a payments dev team that oversaw several billion dollars of bill payments per year. There is nothing instant about moving money in the US.