Section 1 Short title
This Act may be cited as the “Affordable Remittance Act”.
Affordable Remittance Act
A BILL
To require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to provide access to FedNow to affordable remittance providers, and for other purposes.
Sec. 2 Findings
Congress finds the following:
According to the Migration Data Portal, remittance payments support families across the globe and amount to $860,000,000,000 of global payments annually, which surpasses the size of foreign direct investment and development aid to low- and middle-income countries, excluding China.
Remittance payments are the single largest source of financial support to emerging markets.
According to the World Bank, digital remittance providers have used technology to improve financial inclusion by improving access and reducing costs to consumers over the last decade from an average of 9 percent to approximately 6 percent in 2023.
Digital remittance providers can offer near instantaneous payments for consumers around the clock.
Access to Federal Reserve payment rails could enable digital remittance providers to further drive down the cost of remittance payments.
Sec. 3 FedNow Access
In general— The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall, beginning on the date that is 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section provide access to FedNow to each affordable remittance provider.
Affordable remittance provider—
In general— The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall, not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this section, publish a definition of the term affordable remittance provider.
Considerations— When defining the term affordable remittance provider, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—
shall only include persons whose primary business is facilitating affordable remittance payments;
may not include depository institutions (as such term is defined in section 3 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act);
may not include any person in such definition unless the person—
is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Department of the Treasury or otherwise demonstrates compliance with the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act; and
is subject to regulation by a State or Federal agency with jurisdiction over consumer protection; and
shall consider the World Bank’s 3 percent sustainable development goal.
Limitation— With respect to persons who are not otherwise subject to supervision or regulation by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Board of Governors may not impose capital or liquidity requirements, or otherwise supervise, affordable remittance providers, except as necessary to ensure performance on payments entered in FedNow.
Bank Secrecy Act defined— In this subsection, the term Bank Secrecy Act means—
section 21 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1829b);
chapter 2 of title I of Public Law 91–508 (12 U.S.C. 1951 et seq.); and
subchapter II of chapter 53 of title 31, United States Code.
Annual report on trends in the costs of remittances— The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall annually transmit to Congress a report on trends in the costs of remittances.
Rule of construction— Nothing in this section may be construed to required the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to provide access to master accounts to affordable remittance providers.