The Federal Reserve Board proposed amending Regulation J Subpart C on April 8, 2026, to permit FedNow Service participants to use intermediary banks for cross-border payment routing. The proposed rule, Docket No. R-1891, carries a comment deadline of June 9, 2026. The amendment would align FedNow with Fedwire, which has supported intermediary-facilitated cross-border flows for decades.
The Clearing House announced on April 21 that domestic correspondent bank activity on the RTP network will launch in September 2026, extending the rail to institutions without direct connections. TCH is also developing the Immediate Cross-Border Payments pilot with EBA CLEARING and SWIFT to enable real-time USD-EUR transfers between the United States and Europe.
The divergent approaches map to the rails' settlement models. FedNow settles each payment in central bank money through Federal Reserve accounts. The intermediary bank model is a regulatory extension of existing Reserve Bank correspondent infrastructure. RTP settles through prefunded positions in commercial bank money at a joint Federal Reserve account. Cross-border expansion therefore requires a separate commercial interoperability layer, which the IXB partnership with EBA CLEARING provides. RTP's September 2026 correspondent launch date provides a defined timeline for domestic expansion. FedNow's Regulation J rulemaking must conclude before cross-border routing can begin.