As the effort to develop a faster payments system continues apace, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today added its perspective about how consumer protections might best be integrated into new payments mechanisms.

The discussion about the migration to faster payments used to feel like people talking about the weather. Everyone complained about it but no one ever did anything.

The Federal Reserve recently released the roster of those selected for its Faster Payments Task Force, a group representing all stakeholders in the payments industry to help identify approaches to creating a better, faster and safer U.S. payments system.

ABA today urged the Federal Reserve to approve the recent rule change from NACHA, the electronic payments association, that would require financial institutions to have same-day ACH capability and require sending institutions to pay a 5.2 cent per-transaction fee to offset the costs of participating in same-day ACH.

The Federal Reserve on Friday named Gordon Werkema as the system’s payments strategy director, responsible for leading the Fed’s efforts to move toward faster payments and improve the U.S. payments system. Werkema is currently first VP and COO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

The new .bank and .insurance domains coming online this year will provide an “incredible opportunity” to provide a more secure payments infrastructure, ABA and the Financial Services Roundtable said in a letter to the Federal Reserve officials leading the Fed’s faster payments initiative.

The Federal Reserve today requested comments on changes that the regional Federal Reserve Banks would make in connection to NACHA’s same-day ACH rule.

NACHA, the electronic payments association, today announced that its members voted to finalize a rule change that will accelerate ACH settlement, introducing two extra windows during weekdays -- morning and afternoon -- for credit transactions. The rule provides for fees so that receiving financial institutions can recover costs associated with handling same-day ACH.

The Federal Reserve’s faster payments initiative is moving forward, and milestones have been established for the Faster Payments Task Force.

It’s hard to keep up with new developments in payments, says former ABA Chairman Jeff Plagge. But banks need to stay on top of changes to serve their customers.