ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey and ICBA Chairman Preston Kennedy urged the Federal Reserve System to operate a Real-Time Gross Settlement service in support of all financial institutions and their customers.

In a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, the ICBA leaders said the agency’s dual payments role as a regulator and provider of check, ACH and wire transfer services ensures that the customers of community banks and other financial institutions have a trusted option for accessing these services.

“Without the Federal Reserve linking together the nation’s financial institutions, there will be slow and unequal access to real-time settlement and ubiquity will not be achieved,” they wrote.

Kennedy advocated Fed involvement in real-time payments in a recent American Banker op-ed, as did ICBA in a December comment letter.