Bridge Community Bank finds success with a key FedNow® Service use case
Bob Steen
Bridge Community Bank
Bridge Community Bank (Off-site), serving customers in eastern Iowa, has been live with the FedNow Service since its launch in July 2023. Bob Steen, chief executive officer, shared the impact of instant payments for his community financial institution:
“Before the FedNow Service launched, we saw instant payments as an opportunity to win back crucial deposits for our bank. We’d begun to feel the impact of our customers using non-bank products and services to move their money. For a small financial institution serving a largely agricultural community, losing those deposits has a very real impact on our ability to fund loans and provide other services to our community.
“With this opportunity in mind, we prioritized enabling our customers to send and receive instant payments. We’ve also been leveraging the FedNow Service internally so that we can easily model the value that instant payments offer our customers: greater access to and control over funds, transparent transactions and unbeatable convenience. With the FedNow Service, we’re able to illustrate firsthand that a customer can eliminate waiting periods or processing time for those critical transactions where timing really matters.
“We recently unlocked an exciting real estate use case when a Bridge Community customer sent a down payment for a home via the FedNow Service. In today’s market, making those funds available immediately can determine whether you own the home or don’t own the home. In this case, the instant settlement of funds was critical. The recipient had the down payment in their account in seconds, and the home was secured on a Saturday afternoon, when traditional payment options were limited or unavailable.
“Sending capabilities are crucial to our vision because sending unlocks much more potential with the FedNow Service. As we help our customers understand the impact these payments can have, we also highlight the ways Bridge Community uses instant payments for things like invoice payments. And as we discover new efficiencies with the FedNow Service, we model those solutions and maintain that proactive posture. This is how we’re going to build back our deposits.
“Education continues to be an important part of our efforts to build volume, especially when it comes to risk mitigation. Any payment comes with the potential for fraud, but we’ve not experienced any fraud on the FedNow Service to date. We’re always in active conversations about risk — keeping up with the latest in payments also means keeping up with the latest in fraud risk management. Our customers know they can trust an instant payment just like they can trust any other payment we touch.
“It’s not often that a community bank gets to be at the center of something as exciting as the FedNow Service. Now we’re seeing the industry realize that no one can afford to be a bystander. As our list of use cases and transaction volume continues to grow, we’re confident that the FedNow Service will help us provide the solutions that our customers are looking for and the solutions that help us keep those crucial deposits in our community.”
Want to see what other organizations have to say about the FedNow Service? Read more FedNow customer testimonials here.