What the Federal Reserve’s Own FedNow Numbers Confirm
Federal Reserve Financial Services published the 1,500-plus-participant figure and the 44% year-over-year growth rate in its own Fed360 newsletter, marking FedNow’s second anniversary since its July 2023 launch. Full 50-state coverage is itself part of the milestone the Fed chose to highlight, a genuinely national footprint rather than a regional pilot, since an instant-payment rail is only as useful to a merchant’s bank as the number of other banks already connected to it.
The Fed paired that participation number with a second, separate change: FedNow’s per-transaction limit rose from $1 million to $10 million, confirmed on a companion Federal Reserve Financial Services announcement page carrying identical wording. A tenfold increase in the ceiling on a single instant transfer describes a meaningfully different rail than the one that launched in 2023, at least for the kind of large, one-off business payment a $1 million cap would have blocked outright.
Why This Sits Next to Card Volume, Not Inside It
FedNow moves money directly between bank accounts in real time, a different rail from the Visa and Mastercard interchange system most merchant services agents spend their entire day selling into. A merchant asking about FedNow is asking about their bank’s payment infrastructure, a separate question from their card processing relationship, even though the two conversations can sound similar on the surface.
The scale gap between the two rails is still wide. US card network purchase volume, combining Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, reached $2.909 trillion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, up 7.9% year over year, per the Nilson Report. FedNow’s growth is real and fast, more than 1,500 participating institutions and a 44% one-year gain, but it is still building out its base next to the transaction volume already running through the card networks an ISO’s residual check depends on.
The Numbers
FedNow had more than 1,500 participating financial institutions across all 50 states by its second anniversary, a 44% increase from the year before.
Federal Reserve Financial Services, Fed360, 2026 Fees and Payment System Enhancements
FedNow’s per-transaction limit was raised from $1 million to $10 million, confirmed on a companion Federal Reserve Financial Services announcement page.
US card network purchase volume, combining Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, reached $2.909 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, up 7.9% year over year.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Federal Reserve Financial Services, Fed360, 2026 Fees and Payment System Enhancements
- Federal Reserve Financial Services, Announcing 2026 Fees
- Nilson Report, US Card Network Results First Quarter 2026