Macro Musings with David Beckworth · Monday, October 26, 2026
Former Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker argues that introducing a brief delay, such as 16 seconds to reduce fraud or 30 seconds to allow for payment netting, can improve the operational architecture of real-time payment systems.
“If you just add 16 seconds into the payment, you can reduce fraud, Because now you can better look for that fraud, right?”
“And on the liquidity side, if you add just another, say, double that to 30 seconds, you can now start netting more payments and the banks can have lower liquidity that they have to hold in the network”