Which of the following stateme

FedLate

America's financial plumbing is overdue a spot of maintenance.The current payment “rails” on which it is based-built by a group of the country's biggest banks to replace paper cheques—are more than half a century old and run on antiquated code.Although robust,the system is painfully slow. American payments are less sophisticated than those in the rest of the rich world,and indeed those in much of the poor world,too.

It is a problem the Federal Reserve is trying to fix with a centralised instant—payments system,which it launched on July 20th.Aptly called FedNow,this will allow Americans to ping money to their compatriots,via their existing financial institutions,and for payments to settle straight away.All told,35 banks and 16 payment providers have signed up to use the service.

Most American bank transfers are cheap but processed in batches,often taking days to settle.Peer-to-peer（点对点支付） networks,like Cash App,appear much quicker to customers but,beneath the surface,rely on the old system. Regulators have warned that funds held on such apps might not qualify for deposit insurance（存款保险） in the event of a failure.Credit cards,which offer juicy rewards at the cost of even juicier fees,also use existing rails.According to the San Francisco Fed,nearly a third of payments last year were made using plastic.

Typically,Americans use different methods for different types of payment:a water bill is paid via bank transfer;$100 owed to a friend is sent through a payment app;a purchase on Amazon is made with a credit card.A single,real-time payments solution should improve the quality of all.JPMorgan Chase（摩根大通） and Wells Fargo（富国银行）,two heavyweight banks,have signed up to FedNow.But Wall Street is not entirely on board:a longer list of institutions,including Bank of America（美国银行）,Citigroup（花旗银行） and Goldman Sachs（高盛） is absent.Although the older system is slow,it is also profitable for those involved.Financial institutions can take advantage of slow settlements to park cash in interest-bearing short-term securities overnight,or merely keep the money at the Fed to accrue interest.They also pocket late-payment fees and some make money from their own instant-payment systems,such as The Clearing House（清算所）,which is run by a group of banks.

Other countries are also light years ahead of America.In India,for example,instant payments are the norm,accounting for 81% of domestic electronic transactions last year.In Thailand and Brazil, they accounted for 64% and 37% respectively.Emerging markets have embraced instant payments in part because of demography（consumers are younger and more open to change）,in part because of crackdown on cash（policymakers are keen to shrink the size of grey markets, and increase tax takes） and in part because,unlike in America,new payment systems did not have to push aside existing ones,and those who benefited from them.

Mass adoption will face one more hurdle:the American consumer,over whom paper-based payments retain a particular hold. According to ACI Worldwide,a payments firm,around a fifth of all cash transfers in the country happen via cheque.Still,it will be nice for them to have the option,just like the rest of the world.