SoFi joins a growing list of U.S. banks and nearly 1,700 financial institutions supporting instant FedNow payments. The catch is, it belongs to a much smaller payment institution niche that enable such payments going in both directions (in and out), giving members 24/7 real-time access to their funds.
Galileo Financial Technologies has connected online banking and lending fintech platform SoFi to the FedNow Service, enabling bi-directional instant bank transfers for SoFi members. Transactions between SoFi accounts and external U.S. bank accounts now settle in seconds, whether day or night, including weekends and public holidays.
Bidirectional Instant Payments Set SoFi Apart
Today, 58% of U.S. financial institutions that support instant payment processing do so through both the RTP network and the more novel FedNow Service. While FedNow adoption has grown across the U.S. banking sector, most participating institutions only handle inbound transfers. SoFi now processes traffic in both directions, backed by Galileo’s network connection, payment controls, and real-time processing infrastructure.
“For customers, waiting days for money to show up doesn’t match how payments work today,” said Bill Kennedy, CFO and interim head of Galileo. “By pairing FedNow® Service with Galileo’s platform, SoFi gives members instant access to their money whenever they need it, while we manage the infrastructure behind the scenes. It also lays the groundwork to bring the same instant payment capabilities to partners in the future.”
“Helping our members get their money right means giving them control over their money in real time, not days later,” noted Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi. “Money should move instantly and without limits, but legacy technology and data systems fail to provide a safe and reliable platform to achieve instant and limitless money movement. By integrating FedNow into our Galileo payment hub platform, we are among the first companies to enable both sending and receiving funds via FedNow, giving SoFi members instant, 24/7 access to their money.”
What Changes For SoFi Members
Bank-to-bank transfers no longer depend on ACH settlement windows or business-day calendars. Members can shift funds between accounts at different institutions within seconds, useful for covering bill payments, managing balances, or moving money into SoFi to access its products immediately.
An Extensible Model For Fintech Partners
Galileo’s FedNow connection is already operating in a live environment, and SoFi Bank is positioned as the partner bank through which other fintechs, digital banks, and embedded finance platforms can access the same infrastructure, completely bypassing the need to build their own Fed network integration from scratch.
About Galileo Financial Technologies and SoFi
Galileo Financial Technologies is a financial technology division of SoFi that provides banking and payment processing infrastructure to banks, fintechs, and brands across North and Latin America. SoFi purchased payment processing fintech Galileo for $1.2 billion in 2020. Its cloud-native, developer-friendly platform is built to meet regulatory standards in every market it serves, enabling SoFi to connect seamlessly to innovative banking and processing services in multiple locations.
Besides traditional banking services, SoFi is also currently exploring crypto infrastructure innovations. The digital bank is launching SoFiUSD, a new U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, this year to institutional users seeking blockchain-based payment rails while maintaining compliance with traditional banking regulations.
