- Bureau of the Fiscal Service
- Credit Gateway
- FedNow

# FedNow

FedNow  Instant Payments is a method of exchanging money and remittance data in near  real-time with immediate confirmation to sending and receiving parties. It's a  new payment mechanism taking its place alongside cash, check, the automated  clearing house (ACH), and wire transfer.

The  FedNow Service is a new instant payment service that the Federal Reserve Banks have  developed to enable financial institutions to provide safe and efficient  instant payment services in real time, around the clock, every day of the year.   Agencies interested in receiving instant  payments 24/7/365 should e-mail Fiscal Service Credit Gateway at creditgateway@fiscal.treasury.gov.

## Fedwire

### Converted Account Numbers

Historically, some agencies used eight-digit ALCs as their FDS account number. The ALCs also were sometimes known as the Fedwire Beneficiary IDs.

(In practice, we have not used the concept of an account number when referring to how we organized FDS transactions. Instead, we simply organized transactions around an agency’s ALC. However, "account number" and "ALC" are broad and not always synonymous terms, so it is sometimes necessary to distinguish between them even if in FDS they were the same.)

Remitters may include this information when they initiate a payment. Because the FDS account number was the ALC, we had no standard way to let agencies track cash flows at a level under the ALC.

The Credit Gateway assigns each of these legacy FDS agencies a converted Credit Gateway account number. The converted account number is 12 digits. It begins with a leading "8," followed by the agency’s eight-digit ALC, and ends with three zeros.

**Example:** 822222222000; where 22222222 is the agency’s Fedwire Beneficiary ID and ALC.

The agency’s remitters do not have to use the converted account number. They may continue to use the agency’s ALC. If a remitter includes an ALC in a payment, we map it to the appropriate converted account number.

### New Account Numbers

For new accounts, the Credit Gateway issues each account a new Credit Gateway account number.

All new account numbers are 12 digits. They begin with a leading "8," followed by the agency’s eight-digit ALC, and end with a three-digit suffix that is sequentially system generated.

If an agency has more than one cash flow associated with the same ALC, we change the three-digit suffix to treat each of an agency’s cash flows as a new, separate account.

## ACH Credit

### Converted Account Numbers

Historically, agencies used a dedicated, six-digit account ID for each REX account. Remitters included this information when they initiated a payment.

An agency could have more than one REX account ID associated with its ALC. Among other things, this let REX account IDs be set up at the cash flow level, rather than the ALC level.

The Credit Gateway assigns each agency a converted Credit Gateway account number for each of its existing REX account IDs. The Credit Gateway account number is 12 digits. It begins with “800,” followed by the agency’s six-digit REX account ID, and ends with three zeros.

**Example:** 800111111000; where 111111 is the agency’s REX Account ID.

The agency's remitters do not have to use the converted account number. They may continue to use the legacy REX account ID. If a remitter includes a REX account ID in a payment, we map it to the appropriate converted Credit Gateway account number.

Since February 2013, all valid ALC numbers have been eligible to accept ACH credits within the Credit Gateway. If you are not already doing this, contact the Credit Gateway program for ACH instructions to give to your customers.

For new accounts, the Credit Gateway issues each account a new Credit Gateway account number. All new gateway accounts are 12 digits. They begin with a leading "8," followed by the agency’s eight-digit ALC, and end with a three-digit suffix that is sequentially system generated.

If an agency has more than one cash flow associated with the same ALC, we change the three-digit suffix to treat each of an agency’s cash flows as a new, separate account.

Last modified 05/23/23