The direct connection to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails as a service provider is part of Orum’s new money movement API, Deliver. The Deliver API orchestrates and optimizes money movement through Federal Reserve payment rails on behalf of banking institutions.

Clearing the bar for a direct connection for payment processing and settlement is exceptionally difficult. Meeting the criteria for direct access requires organizations to meet and exceed the Federal Reserve’s rigorous diligence, contracting and IT testing requirements, as well as those of sponsoring financial institutions.

Many payments platforms and fintechs cannot gain access to all the possible payment rails while also requiring them to navigate technical issues and frequent downtime depending on their banking partner. According to the Ponemon Institute, downtime can cost businesses as much as $500,000 per hour.

“We’re thrilled to be among a small number of fintechs capable of supporting live transaction activity through the Federal Reserve’s payment rails,” said Stephany Kirkpatrick, founder and CEO of Orum. “Since our earliest days, we’ve been obsessed with solving the time to money gap for our customers so that they can build the best financial products that improve access to the financial system. By connecting directly to the Federal Reserve Bank, we’re optimizing and orchestrating payments to deliver even faster and more reliable payments to our financial institution customers. This allows us to bring unparalleled payment speed and certainty of settlement to the market.”

The launch of Orum’s new Deliver API allows the innovative fintech to offer bank-rate pricing and expanded processing windows. The new API launch comes just months after Orum created a first-of-its-kind solution - Verify - that instantly verifies bank accounts. The Verify API leverages the FedNow Service and RTP and covers 100% of all U.S. bank accounts, replacing traditional offerings that rely on batched data, flawed probabilistic scoring, and antiquated microdeposits.