In brief
A newly introduced bipartisan House bill would take a meaningful step toward reshaping how certain nonbank payment companies operate and access core US payments infrastructure. The Payments Access and Consumer Efficiency Act of 2026 (“PACE Act”), introduced on April 21, 2026 by Representatives Young Kim (R-CA) and Sam Liccardo (D-CA), would create a new category of federally-supervised financial institution – the “registered covered provider” – designed to potentially unlock two commercially significant benefits for qualifying companies: first, the apparent ability to provide payment services nationwide; and second, eligibility to apply for direct access to the Federal Reserve’s core payment rails.
The bill would establish a new federal registration framework, administered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), through which qualifying payment companies could seek registered covered provider status. Upon obtaining that status, a provider could then apply to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“Fed Board”) for a payments reserve account providing access to Fedwire, FedNow, and the Federal Reserve Automated Clearing House (FedACH). The bill would pair this pathway with a supervisory and customer protection framework tailored to a payments business model.
The bill arrives amid broader federal efforts to modernize the legal and regulatory framework for digital payments, stablecoins, and market infrastructure, and against the backdrop of continued industry efforts to reduce reliance on sponsor-bank models, improve settlement speed, and lower the cost and complexity associated with indirect access to payment systems. The proposal also follows the Federal Reserve’s recent exploration of limited-purpose “payment accounts” or “skinny” master accounts for certain payment-focused institutions, though the PACE Act would go further by placing the access question on a more explicit statutory footing and routing account approval through the Fed Board-level process described in the bill. Industry support was immediate, with endorsements at introduction from the Financial Technology Association, the Blockchain Association, The Digital Chamber, and the Crypto Council for Innovation.