In my Nacha round up post, I noted that the FedWire migration date (and subsequent postponement) seemed to split the banks I spoke to:
“And everyone told us that their inside source said that the deadline was immovable. Other than the other 50% who were adamant that their inside source said it was definitely going to be yet another delay.”
It was a far from scientific sample, but the fact that it was multiple people who thought there was going to be a delay was worrying. Thankfully, the latest tracker suggests that 100% of banks are ready.
June 18th saw a press release confirming that the cut-over would happen. Yet as late as July 1st, the Fed issued press releases with this statement:
“We recommend that customers and vendors continue to test and verify their internal procedures through July 11.”
This highlights the very real potential issue that there may be problems when the system goes live.
The 100% readiness is the testing of exchanging files with the Fed, not end-to-end, and across every system that is involved with payments. It’s difficult to do full end-to-end testing, let alone with every bank they may deal with. While many banks have exchanged payments with peers, notably not all have done this, and certainly not with every bank they deal with. Whether this is because they’re not ready, don’t have time or don’t believe is necessary is unclear.
Clearly nobody wants there to be an issue, so there will be many on tenterhooks next Monday as the system goes live!
