The Federal Reserve operates the Fedwire Funds Service, a major United States system for large-value bank transfers. Eligible financial institutions use it to send and receive payments that settle individually in central-bank money.
Fedwire is a real-time gross settlement system. “Real-time” means payments are processed as instructions are accepted, while “gross” means transactions settle individually rather than being netted into batches. This design supports final settlement for time-critical payments.
Fedwire is different from ACH, which commonly processes lower-value consumer and business payments through batch-oriented clearing. It is also different from SWIFT, which is primarily a global financial-messaging network. A bank may use more than one system depending on the payment’s purpose and destination.