NORTHBROOK, Illinois – July 19, 2022 – UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science, today announced its collaboration with Iliad Solutions, a company that helps test and launch payment solutions. The collaboration combines independent third-party services from UL Solutions with Iliad’s testing platform to offer optional support features for financial institutions and processors implementing the FedNow Service. Launching in 2023, the FedNow Service is a new instant payment system under development by the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve recently announced that financial institutions and processors in the FedNow Pilot Program are onboarding for the program’s initial testing phase. Concurrently, UL Solutions and Iliad are working with financial institutions, including some members of the FedNow Pilot Program, to help prepare them to move to the FedNow Service. Iliad is among more than 80 service providers currently featured in the FedNow Service Provider Showcase.
Iliad’s established testing platform has proven successful with top-tier providers of solutions to national real time payment schemes. UL Solutions currently delivers multiple large-scale secure virtual laboratories and hosted models for numerous central banks, government organizations, international and U.S. domestic payment brands, top-tier issuers and acquirers, payment service providers and ATM and point-of-sale (POS) terminal vendors.
While the Iliad platform tests for ISO 20022, an international standard for exchanging electronic messages between financial institutions, and application programming interface (APIs), UL Solutions brings expertise in designing, operating and maintaining testing platforms and environments. Their combined offerings can help enable financial institutions and processors implementing the FedNow Service to securely launch and host.
“As the finance industry shifts toward a global standard for financial operational systems, the adoption of real-time payment solutions is accelerating,” said Chante Maurio, vice president and general manager of the Identity Management and Security group at UL Solutions. “At the same time, these payment innovations in an interconnected, digital world are complex, which can lead to risks and vulnerabilities. Working together, UL Solutions and Iliad are helping to enable a variety of financial institutions to safely and securely become part of the FedNow Service ecosystem.”
The first payment rail sponsored by the Federal Reserve Banks since the introduction of the Automated Clearing House, known as ACH, in the early 1970s, the FedNow Service will enable instant payments for financial institutions of any size, in any community — 365 days of the year. Consistent with the Federal Reserve System’s historical role of providing payment services alongside those from in the private sector, the FedNow Service will offer choice in the market for clearing and settling instant payments as well as promoting resiliency through redundancy. Financial institutions and their service providers will be able to use the service as a springboard to provide innovative instant payment services to customers.
Recent research from FIS, a technology solutions provider to merchants and banks, suggests that real-time payments in the U.S. market are approaching a tipping point, yet a large number of smaller financial institutions have yet to embrace them. The FedNow Service is addressing this gap by enabling financial institutions across the U.S. to provide safe and efficient instant payment services.
“Iliad Solutions is proud to be partnering with UL Solutions to help connect financial institutions to prepare them to offer instant payment solutions through the new FedNow Service,” said Anthony Walton, CEO of Iliad Solutions. “Combining our real-time payment testing services with UL’s financial industry expertise, insight and offerings will help further strengthen security and build confidence in real-time payments as a preferred payments system.”
