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The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced it will expand the operating hours for the online FedwireŽ Funds Service. The Fedwire Funds Service will open three and one-half hours earlier (9:00 p.m. Eastern Time the prior calendar day) than the current opening time of 12:30 a.m. ET. The closing time for the service will remain 6:30 p.m. ET. The scheduled timeframe for full implementation of the expanded operating hours is the second quarter of 2004. Fedwire participants will be notified at least sixty days before the specific effective date of the new hours. The impetus for the expansion of the Fedwire operating hours was industry requests to achieve greater overlap of U.S. wholesale payments system operating hours with those of the Asia-Pacific markets, including Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and New Zealand. The Fedwire Funds Service is a real-time, large-value electronic funds transfer service, which is provided by the Federal Reserve Banks. Depository institutions and other authorized participants use this service to send and receive large-value, time-critical payments. Each payment transaction is settled individually in central bank money and is final and irrevocable once processed.
The Board's notice is attached.
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