For the second time in less than a year, the Federal Reserve will raise the transaction limit for its FedNow instant payment system. Starting in November, the cap will increase from $1 million to $10 million. As recently as February, the limit stood at just $500,000.
FedNow’s competitor in instant payments, The Clearing House, raised its RTP network payment limit from $1 million to $10 million at the end of 2024.
According to the Fed, the higher limit reflects both the growing need for speed in the payments landscape and the rising demand from business for higher-value use cases. In addition to million-dollar vendor payments, the Fed cited examples such as corporate treasury and payroll transactions. The higher limit will also benefit high-dollar commercial real estate payments, enabling closings on weekends or outside normal business hours.
Confidence in the System
The higher limit reflects growing confidence in the system’s security. Since instant payments are generally irrevocable, users need assurance that their multimillion-dollar transactions are protected against fraud and other potential pitfalls.
“Users need to be comfortable that the degree on fraud mitigation is at least on par with wire transfers,” said Hugh Thomas, Lead Analyst of Commercial and Enterprise at Javelin Strategy & Research. “The Fed appears to have confidence that if you apply the stress test in a worst-case scenario, they could rise to that occasion.”
Skyrocketing Growth
Since going live in July 2023, FedNow has experienced a strong growth trajectory. It processed 2.1 million payments in Q2 2025, up 62% from the previous quarter. The average payment exceeded $115,000, resulting in an average daily value of money moved of $2.7 billion—an increase of more than 400% year over year.
Nevertheless, FedNow remains a distant second to RTP, which reported 1.18 million payments per day in Q2, with a total daily value of $481 billion. That’s nearly triple the figure from the previous quarter.
FedNow currently has more than 1,400 participating organizations across all 50 states. In addition to raising its transaction limit, FedNow is actively working to encourage more institutions to enable send capabilities, as the majority of the 1,400 financial institutions on the platform remain receive-only.
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