The Federal Reserve’s financial services division has appointed Kim Robbins as its new top payments executive, tapping her to replace the retiring Mark Gould.
Federal Reserve Financial Services announced the appointment Thursday, picking a nearly 20-year Federal Reserve veteran to lead the division that provides payments services to financial institutions. She’ll step into the role on Nov. 16, according to the press release stating her appointment.
She has served as first vice president and chief operating officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City since March 2024 and has been with that reserve bank in some capacity since January 2012, according to her LinkedIn profile. Prior to heading to that regional bank, she worked for Federal Reserve Financial Services as the chief of enterprise services.
In a post last week on that social media site, Robbins said she was pleased to “return ‘home’ to payments.” She also gave a nod to the work that lies ahead.
“With rapid innovation transforming the industry, it is clear to me that we are in a pivotal moment in payments,” she said. “I look forward to partnering across the Federal Reserve System and with our industry stakeholders to advance modern, secure, and resilient payment services that meet the dynamic and evolving needs of financial institutions, businesses, and the American public.”
Gould is retiring after spending the last three years with a key focus on rolling out the Fed’s instant payments system FedNow, starting in mid 2023, and trying to lure banks across the country to join the system. As of this month, the central bank has attracted just over 1,900 U.S. banks and credit unions to use the real-time payments system.
With some 8,500 financial institutions in the U.S. eligible to use the system, the Fed has a ways to go in drawing more banks and credit unions to the new service. Last month, the Fed began offering a discount program to entice financial institutions to participate in the service.
Only U.S. financial institutions can join the system, which enables them to send payments in a matter of seconds or minutes, as opposed to transactions sometimes taking days to settle. The Fed launched the instant payments system in July 2023 in the hopes of bringing smaller banks into the realm of faster payments. That followed the start of a private real-time system, the RTP Network, by bigger banks that own The Clearing House in November 2017.
In late 2024, the Fed disclosed that it cost about $246 million to operate the FedNow payments system that year, after requiring about $100 million for development in 2023, according to a report from the central bank.
The central bank this year has also been exploring how to extend the reach of the system across international borders. Last month, the Fed said the real-time system was “on the verge” of providing cross-border transaction “support,” but then it stopped short of saying how and when.
Robbins has leadership experience both with respect to FedNow as well as the broader Federal Reserve Financial Services, the release said.
Specifically, the release noted that she was FedNow’s chief administrative officer, leading the “functions supporting the program’s rapid scale-up across multiple Federal Reserve Banks,” plus “strengthening the governance, risk, compliance and legal structures” for the system.
Aside from FedNow, Robbins will oversee the Fed’s retail, wholesale and securities services for financial institutions, the release noted.
Before Robbins joined the Fed, she had an early start to her career in a different kind of retail sector. She worked for seven years for the GAP and Payless ShoeSource, managing various aspects of the retail chains’ business lines.