30 July 2026 Podcast Erik Van Bramer from Federal Reserve Financial Services

Speaker A: Off the rails from the us faster payments council.

Speaker B: This is off the Rails from the US Faster Payments Council and I am your host, Rich Reid Lutanen, CEO of the fpc. Today I'm joined by Eric Van Bremer from the Federal Reserve Financial Services. Eric and I are going to talk about all things FedNow, where the growth is coming from, the use cases that are emerging and functionality that is coming to the market. And of course we're going to hit on the Denver sports scene. But first, the headlines. Registration for the FPC Fall Member Meeting is open. It will be in Kansas City November 4th through through the 6th. Find that@fasterpaymentscouncil.org of course. And as always, a huge thank you to our Fall Member Meeting sponsors. First our Platinum Sponsors, ACI Worldwide, North American Banking Company and Visa Direct and our Gold sponsors Aloya, bny, Paymento De Novo, Treasury, EPAY Resources, Federal Reserve Financial Services, fincom, finsley, mastercard form three, plaid shop, shazam, um, the clearinghouse, ptap advisory, trustly, validify, westpay and wisea. We've got a new resource for you on fasterpaymentscouncil.org, stablecoins as a cross Border Payment Method the FPC Cross Border Payments Workgroup in collaboration with the FPC Digital Assets Workgroup have developed this report that examines how genius act compliant stablecoins could be used to improve cross border payment processes and compare stablecoin based models to traditional correspondent banking approaches. The report explores two primary stablecoin payment models. 1. Direct stablecoin transfers between parties and indirect settlement models where financial institutions or fintechs use stablecoins as back end settlement mechanism. It also outlines the operational compliance, liquidity and regulatory considerations organizations must evaluate when implementing stablecoin based payment solutions. And FPC is launching our Value Engine sponsored by ACI Worldwide. This is a completely new tool that will allow financial institutions and corporates to put in their key payments data. Get a benchmarked unbiased estimates of the potential ROI for implementing different faster payments. You can find that on the FPC website. There's a basic version for non members in the Education tab. Members, you'll want to head to the members only area where you can use the full functionality of this powerful new tool. And with that let's get to the discussion with Eric Van Bremer of Federal Reserve Financial Services. All right, we're joined by Eric Van Bramer from the Fed. Eric, thanks for joining us.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me Reid.

Speaker B: I guess I should be official Federal Reserve Financial Services. Right. Um, uh, let's be official three, three years in. Eric, uh, with FedNow, uh, how's the service doing from your perspective? Let's just jump right into that. What does the participation and volume stand relative to where you expected to be right now? And as. And I guess the. Has time gone by quickly or slowly from where you sit over the last three years?

Speaker A: Uh, I love that question, Reid, because I think that that question about quickly or slowly. My wife uses an expression that the days are long, but the years are short. And she talks about it with raising our children and watching them grow up. But I think it applies here as well, because I can certainly look back on some really, really long days. But then at the same time, I'm absolutely shocked that it was just three years ago that we launched. So, um, I think that that applies to both. So I would say, in general, we're incredibly happy with where we're at today. I think we went live three years ago with 35 financial institutions, a combination of some really large financial institutions and the smallest financial institutions in the country. And fast forward to today, and we are over 1800 financial institutions live on the network. Uh, so we're pleased with that. Of that, 95% of them are community financial institutions. But we also have that smattering of the biggest financial institutions. We have seven of the top 10 also participating in our network. So we're really pleased both with the number of institutions as well as the diversity of the type of institutions that we have on our network. So I think we're really, really pleased with that. We recently just released our second quarter statistics, which, very happy to say, showed some really strong growth. Um, I think we had 83% growth quarter over quarter, uh, going into that second quarter number. So really pleased with that. Uh, we're moving over $3 billion a day. Uh, when you kind of think about really the use cases that drive instant payments, you know, I think we're very excited to see some really larger dollars. I think if you do the math of what we're at, we're over $50,000 is the average transaction. So obviously there's some big liquidity and settlement type transactions that skew those numbers. But even if we take those out, the average dollar amount is really over $2,000, um, on our network. And I think that really is interesting to think about. I know when I first started talking about instant pay that P2P and that was the use case we used because it was easy to describe, and I think the reality of what we're Seeing today is, is much different and so really pleased with that and where we're at today.

Speaker B: Yeah, that is one thing. We have to all be kind of amateur statisticians as we look at these numbers and kind of understand like, well, the mean is going to be skewed by these, by this one type of activity that happens. You really got to look at what's the median? What are these different things that we can look at. What's. I mean the mode.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If you take your, remember your AP stats class.

Speaker A: What's the most number? Um, I think, um.

Speaker B: And I mean you said 3 billion a day. Just quick math. That's a trillion a year.

Speaker A: That's.

Speaker B: That seems like real money.

Speaker A: That's real money.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is really kind of. As we look back on those three years of growth, I think that's really what resound, you know, kind of hits home with me is this is becoming a true instant, uh, payment rail. You know, it's starting, it's not on par. It's still small compared to check and ACH and wire activity. But if you think about it going from where we started into where we're at today, this is really becoming an important part of our payment infrastructure. So it's exciting to watch.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And yeah, small compared to ach. But in compared to same day ach, the numbers are getting more and more comparable. And what I, when I observed and Notice see my LinkedIn post and people listening hopefully are also following me on LinkedIn. But the, the growth of these networks, FedNow and RTP has not really diminished the use of these other networks that are out there like same day ach. Right. You're seeing the volume of FedNow and RTP growing like crazy and same day ACH is continuing to grow as well. So like it's just, it's clear that we're finding demand for this type of transaction that was that that requires the unique characteristics of an instant payment.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there's always a lot of conversation about cannibalism and I'm sure there's going to be some around the edges with other payment rails. But the reality is I think just the sheer number of payments that are taking place in the industry, instant payments has brought a whole new opportunity set. So I think that overall piece just continues to grow and grow. So very excited.

Speaker B: Uh, that's actually a good segue where I wanted to go next which is about use cases because they are, they're constantly evolving. So we, you know, I think for a long time we've we've heard about and for a reason, right? There's lots of volume going through like digital wallet transactions, account to account transfers. Um, but what beyond those, what's really resonating with participants right now and what's, you know, I guess what surprised you?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think, you know, there's probably two use cases that I probably couldn't have talked about, you know, six months ago. And I think the, the ones you use the digital wallet obviously account to account, we saw those early on and, and that was really exciting. And those continue to grow, honestly. Uh, but I think a couple that I really like more recently, uh, first one is small business. You know, so we've seen 88% growth in small business activity over the last quarter to quarter. And I think that drive of small business to us is really important not just because it's starting to become real volume within the network, but I like to think about, you know, why we rolled out instant payments in the first place and I think about the efficiency play of instant payments. And we know that check activity has been going down over the last, you know, umpteen years. However, the one area checks have been really sticky is that small business. And so to see small business activity start to move from paper checks over to instant payments to me is not just only about the volume, but it's really about we're starting to see those efficiencies in the network. And so I love, we always talk about there's a rail for every type of payment. And then I always put up the caveat in the asterisk except for checks. I would love to see the demise of the check as we move things away. I hear about check fraud all the time. I hear about, you know, the inefficiency. So I do think that anything we can do to move a small business away from leveraging checks to move them to a faster rail like instant payments, I think is a win for the industry. And so that growth we're really excited about. I think the other one that I like to highlight, and part of this is because I was shocked at how bad it was, uh, is the insurance business, insurance disbursements. So I recently did a conference in Chicago that was about innovations in the insurance industry. And I was a on a panel with all these insurance businesses and they were talking about all of the investments they're making on the user experience and even predictive AI about, you know, knowing when the water heater is going to go out so that you can get it fixed before it goes out. So there's not an insurance claim or, you know, using AI to predict, you know, traffic incidents and helping people stay away from. So they don't have the insurance issue in the first place. And they have all these investments and all these great ideas and then you talk to them and then, and they're like, but when there's a claim, we mail them a check. And so again, I'm like, you have all of this great user experience, all these investments in innovation, and yet it's an industry still so reliant on paper. Check. And so that's another one that as we're starting to see insurance disbursements and claim payouts go over the FedNow network, to me, it's not just about this is going to be the volume driver. You know, that's all great. But again, it's that efficiency that when we decided to do this, it was about improving the efficiency of the payments in the United States. And so use cases like small business and insurance. We're actually starting to accomplish that. So those are probably the, the two beyond the, the ones we talk about all the time that are more recent and also in my mind, pretty big milestones for our industry.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, think about just the insurance angle. Like, you think about that as a, as just a person who lives their life. Right. Like everybody has insurance claims now and then. And when you have an insurance claim, there's some urgency to needing to needing the money. Right. Like you need to get your car fixed or you need to get your roof fixed or whatever it is. And the, the mailing of, uh, you know, time like changing from a week potentially by the time a check is mailed and deposited and funds available in your account to 10 seconds, like, absolutely, yeah.

Speaker A: It has more impact to real people. And I think, you know, even we talk about insurance as an industry. But then you can even bring that back to. One of the most proud moments I've had within FedNow in the last year was when we started seeing FEMA payments going over the Fed. Now, now granted, again, it's not huge volume, I guess, I guess that's a good thing. Means we're not having tons of natural disasters, so that should be a good thing. But, but the reality, exactly to your point of these are people in their most dire situation, they probably need that money faster than, you know, your typical type of payout. And so when FEMA started to be able to offer that as an option to people and the idea that, you know, yes, instead of mailing a check to my mailbox that no longer exists because we had a tornado in town and you're actually just putting the money into my account in seconds. Phenomenal. I mean this is really why we do these things. So I love those kind of growth.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that can drive that growth and drive additional use cases is additional functionality and capabilities on those on your network. So what's coming next?

Speaker A: Great question. Um, I think one of the things that we talk about, and I know in the industry, and you talk about it a lot in your role, uh, is concerns about fraud. And we get that. And the reality is there's basis points, levels of fraud in these networks. They are very, very low. But we also understand that that's partly because they're fairly new networks and there's not ubiquitous reach. And a lot of the things that I think the fraudster look for, but we're not resting on that low number. Right. So we are continually looking at how do we stay ahead of that. And I think one of the areas that FedNow has really been focused on is those value added services to support, um, fraud prevention. And so I think one of the ones that I look forward to, uh, we recently announced Network Intelligence tool, which is a tool, it's an API based tool within the FedNow network that allows the sender to get some information about the payee in the transaction. They can see how long they've been on the network, how many payments they received, pretty basic information about their FedNow activity to help the sender decide is this a legitimate endpoint I want to send to? One of the things I'm most excited about is we're taking that concept and really starting to blow it out. We have a service in the ACH world called uh, payee name verification, which takes a lot more data than we have in FedNow and looks at the full ACH data and starts to do name matching. And so we're looking to how do we build those together and start leveraging an API tool in the FedNow network to start making sure that if you go to send a transaction, a FedNow instant transaction to read, that the tool can tell you, yes, the account that you're sending it to is associated with an individual with the name read and so taking it down that path. These are the kind of enhancements that we're looking at and kind of rolling out on a regular basis not to stop the fraud we have, but to stay in front of it and so it doesn't become an issue. And so I think that's one of the Big ones that I think is really important for us. Um, another one, obviously the One Leg out announcement, uh, here at the Federal Reserve, in talking about what does One Leg out look like in an instant payment world? And I know we can dig into that a little bit more detail. Um, but I think One Leg out is another one that we're looking to expand the use cases. You know, we've always said that from the beginning, FedNow is really focused to be a domestic tool and focused on domestic transactions. But we've identified that there's a need in the industry and we're at a point where it makes sense for us to tweak both the ISO formats a little bit so that you can put additional information in there, as well as changing our rule set a little bit to really support that concept of a One Leg Out. And so we're working right now with some large financial institutions that say, okay, if we were to take this and set it up like we do with wires, where it's still a domestic transaction, but we're going to give you all the information you need to take that next step to maybe take that transaction from a domestic, and then however it is you want to do that, move it to an international transaction. So that concept is really kind of, from our perspective, putting it in line and opening up additional use cases, which is important to us with instant payments, but really kind of putting it on the same level playing field as we do with the wire transactions. And we think that in conversation with some of these big institutions, they see that as a huge opportunity for other organizations to send them a domestic FedNow transaction, which they can then leverage for that international hop. So we're excited by that. It's looking to happen later this year. And again, a good advancement, I think, for the overall instant payment networks.

Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of, I think, positive early reactions to the proposal. I guess I don't want to presuppose that the rulemaking will finish with it.

Speaker A: I'm going to say this is all in pilot in concept right now. Yes.

Speaker B: But one thing I was wondering is as you're talking to these pilot participants and these folks who would potentially be the big users of this kind of functionality. Back to the use cases. What are they like? What are the use cases they're talking about?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the big advantage that it has. So a lot of them right now rely on wires. So, you know, domestic bank A sends a wire, uh, to domestic bank B. And I think just like we identified when we moved to instant payments in general, one of the big differentiators over the wire platforms is the 24 by 7 by 365 nature. And I think right now that that can be an obstacle. When you're talking about global finance, you're talking about international payments. That right now, uh, we are restricted to that first leg, the domestic leg, or the last leg, if it's an inbound transaction, is reliant on the hours of Fed wires open. And so with an instant payment tool like FedNow, you get into that 24 by 7 by 365. So I think that's a big differentiator, uh, in opening up some of those European and Asian markets at different times. And then I think the other thing it really does is, again, it's just one more alternative as we're seeing a lot of organizations and say, you know, maybe wires are a more expensive tool for good reason. This is another opportunity on something that maybe we have different controls around. It's a different dollar threshold. Why not use instant payments to do that, either first or last leg of that overall transaction? So I think there's, you know, unlimited, uh, international opportunities. But I think that 247 is a big piece.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's just a part of the trend we've all seen over our entire lives, frankly, of the world becoming smaller in various ways and just making access to different markets.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And, you know, the fact that we're sleeping doesn't mean that everybody is right, so.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yep. It's a different world now.

Speaker B: I, uh, wanted to change gears a little bit before we play our games, Eric. I want to talk about digital assets and stable coins. You know, I. I feel like it has to come up in every. Every time we talk about payments for. We have to talk about stablecoins. So you have to talk about stablecoins now. Um, what do you. Where do you see that fit? I don't. You know, I'm like, well, what do you think about stable? But where do you see it fitting, uh, relative to all the other things that are out there that are competing for an FI's attention right now?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think much like you said, it's almost impossible to have a conversation right now without people wondering, you know, how do stablecoins fit into this? And I don't know that I have a crystal ball on how it's going to end, but I do think, absolutely, it is a distraction at the moment. I think that there's opportunities for stablecoins and all these other payment tools to coexist. Again, I mentioned. I think there's a, uh, rail for every type of transaction. And so I really focus on, you know, when you're dealing with stablecoins. And maybe most of the use cases I hear have to do with international payments. I think is the, the one that a lot of organizations coalesce around with stablecoin. But the reality is there still needs to be a mechanism to move from a stablecoin into a fiat currency. And that's where I could see that FedNow and stablecoins could really kind of complement each other as an opportunity for, you know, whether that's moving it into a digital wallet, moving funds back out into a financial institution. Those are opportunities where I think that they are very complementary. But at the same time I do think that much like last year we talked about the big ISO conversions in the industry, uh, specifically in wires and chips and others, uh, were a distraction because everybody had to have the resources dedicated to look at that. And I do think stablecoins kind of fill in that this year where a lot of organizations, and it doesn't matter if I'm talking to a small community credit union or community bank or all the way up to the biggest banks in the country, um, all of them are talking about what is their stablecoin strategy. And so I think with that, obviously it's going to take resources, it's going to take time and energy. And so in some ways it could be a distraction. It might be a really important and good distraction, but it definitely, I think could be categorized as a distraction for not.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, it's, we got to have something to talk about. So why not stable?

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yes. All right, good stuff. Let's play some games. Let's play odd one Out. Our listeners know we'll give you three things and you're gonna tell us which one for you is the odd one out and why based on whatever criteria you choose. Uh, um, all right, so the first three Eric Wire, ach, Instant Payments.

Speaker A: I would definitely say my, my odd one out on that one is ach, um, not because it doesn't serve a lot of great use cases. And I think same day ACH fills a lot of great use cases. But when I think about the other two, they truly are real time gross settlement tools. And so because of that, to me Instant Payments and Wire, very closely linked, very similar in mind.

Speaker B: How about B2B, C to B or A to A?

Speaker A: On that one, I think I'm going to go with C to B. And again I think all three of them have great use cases. Associated with it. I think there's an instant payment use case that lines up with all three of those. But I do think that C2B is probably the least mature of all of those. I think has a lot of potential. Um, we have a lot of great conversations about how it could fill that C2B role. Um, and everything from point of sale to E commerce. I think there's a lot of cool opportunities, but I do think it's definitely less mature than the other two. So for that reason, I'm going to go C2B.

Speaker B: Fair enough. Uh, how about these three? Overhead, roll or spay?

Speaker A: Okay, so. So here you're gonna embarrass me with my fly fishing skills. I can see because of those three. And for those who aren't as familiar, they're all different types of casting. Uh, within the fly fishing world, I would have to say overhead. And the reason I would say overhead jumps out at me is it's the one that I'm actually probably pretty good at. Okay. Compared to Roland Spay. Uh, I think those are harder casts. And I would also say that I wish I was better at the. Because, um, as someone who has been well known to put a fly in the tree behind me, but standing in a river casting, uh, if I could spay cast at it more consistently, I probably wouldn't do lose so many flies.

Speaker B: Yeah, see I, I look at that. I'm like, man, I would probably be catching in my ear or something, um,

Speaker A: a little more complicated. Yes.

Speaker B: Uh, how about NFL, NHL or mlb?

Speaker A: So for those of your listeners who don't know, I live in Colorado and so I'm going to have to say mlb. And the reason I call it mlb. I love baseball. But here in Colorado, I would say we have pretty strong, uh, football and hockey programs. Um, pretty consistently post season baseball team, not so good. Not so much in the baseball world. I love my Rockies, but, uh, they are not very good. So I'm going to have to go with Major League baseball on that one.

Speaker B: Beautiful, beautiful place to see a game though. If anybody's in the Denver area and there's a Rockies game, it's a great place.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I honestly think that's, that's part of the reason they're not a great team is the ownership doesn't have that much interest in making them better because they still sell out every game and it's still a fun experience. So, uh, they're probably just making money hand over fist with a subpar team.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, as a payments beer nerd, I Appreciate that. It's Coors Field, so.

Speaker A: So, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Um, all right. Uh, three more. Receive send, request for payment.

Speaker A: Yeah, probably. Much like the. The C2B answer, I would probably say request for payment because I think it has massive opportunity and is something we as an industry need to spend some time and energy kind of maturing. But quite honestly, it's the least mature of the three. Obviously, I think receive is the most mature. I think send is growing every day, and we're excited by that. But I would say that request for payment, um, with the most potential and also the least mature is the one I'd call out.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. You know, I did look it up, though. Eric. Every single transaction has a sender and a receiver. So those two.

Speaker A: That is true. Yeah. How about number of senders, the concentration on the send side? I'd love to see every financial institution be able to take advantage of. Advantage of the send use cases. And we're just not quite there yet. But we'll get there. Yep.

Speaker B: Uh, and, um, actually, we're in the process of putting out a tool. I'll just throw this out there for the, for the audience that, that will help financial institutions. Maybe they're already doing receive. It'll help them get their. Get their mind around. What's the ROI potential for send. What's the ROI potential for Adding different use cases to my mix. Um, things like that. So keep an eye out. Listen, look, for our newsletter, we'll be announcing this, we're calling the Value Engine. Um, it's going to be a really cool tool. So, um, just a little teaser for the audience.

Speaker A: Uh, I love that, Reed, and anything we could do to partner with you, because that's the conversation my team has on a pretty regular basis. Uh, a lot of organizations that want to be on the network, but what's the ROI or the business case or. I always hear that. Well, my customers aren't asking for it. They're probably not asking for ACH either. But you need to be able to provide them with the tools to overcome some of the challenges you got to offer Send all the way down the market. So I, Yeah, I love that you guys are doing that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it. It. And I'll just, you know, sneak peek. It. It shows like, it's all industry benchmark data. Lets you put like, very, very specifically what, what your volumes are as a financial institution. And, and there is a very compelling case for lots of different use cases for send. Like, I think, I think this will help FIs get their. Get their minds around It. In a. In a concrete way. So I'm excited about it.

Speaker A: It. But love that, Love that.

Speaker B: Uh, let's see. Good stuff. You've won. Odd one out. Congratulations.

Speaker A: Uh, excellent work.

Speaker B: Let's move on. Let's play word association. I'll just throw something out there. You just say the first thing that comes to your mind and tell us why disputes.

Speaker A: Um, I would say exception resolution service. Uh, it's a service we've had in the ACH world for a long time about how two organizations that are disputing something can. Can leverage the tool to kind of communicate with each other. It's now available in FedNow and instant payments, so. Ers. Exception resolutions. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, one leg out.

Speaker A: Exciting, uh, opportunity. Uh, it'll be interesting to see the innovation on that, but I think that's another one that's just a great opportunity to see growth in the industry.

Speaker B: What is this? High chairs.

Speaker A: High chairs. So I think this would probably go back to, um. I think you're familiar. Know that, um, I live a little bit of a Norman Rockwell, um, life here in Colorado, and that I have gone from raising my kids in our home to, uh, two of my sons live right down the street, marry their high school sweethearts, and we have entered the world of grandbabies. We're gonna have three grandbabies here by the end of the year. And so my dining room has now moved into, uh, not just the formal dining room, but we started to expand it into a collection of high chairs. Ah. So high chairs is my new world. I love everything about it. Uh, but it definitely is, uh, kind of a regular now in my home.

Speaker B: So the question is, do you have a dog to clean up underneath the highchairs?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Every highchair should come with at least one. We have two excellent dogs. And I tell you, we had one of the grandkids up in the mountains with no dogs with us, and it made for a much longer cleaning. Experienced. Yes.

Speaker B: The dogs, they know what to do. Um, uh, how about agentic AI?

Speaker A: Oh, again, this is partly my lack of knowledge, but I'd say buzzword. Um, again, I look at my younger kids, and I think ubiquity was one of their first words, because that was all we talked about, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Uh, we. We need ubiquity. I feel like agentic AI will be my grandkids. Buzzword that they will have that in their regular jargon, because we talked about it a lot. Can't go to a conference without having an agentic AI conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I, uh, I think it'll be. I feel like there's a lot of people posting about using it in ways that I can't quite figure out how they're. How they're really. If it's really true. Um, anyway, how about tokenized deposits?

Speaker A: Really, really interesting. I think similar to stablecoin. I think it'll be interesting to see how it develops. I think, again, it's. It's a new alternative. I think it's got some interesting use cases. I think they're very complimentary to what's already happening in the industry, but to me, it'll be interesting. I just. Is it. Is it a distraction? Is it a buzzword? Or is it truly a big part of our payments in the future? I. I don't know that I'm a betting person on that one.

Speaker B: All right, one more i70.

Speaker A: So i70 for anyone who's been to. To Colorado. Um, easy word association. Ski traffic. Everyone's like, how far away are you from skiing? I'm like, well, it depends. If I go on Thursday, it's an hour to the slopes. If I go come home on a Sunday, it's about four hours. So, uh, ski traffic is definitely my i70. Uh, yeah, association.

Speaker B: It can be a little bit. A little bit intimidating out there with the combination of all the ski traffic and then a lot of trucking can

Speaker A: go through there, too. Yeah. For people not comfortable driving in the mountains. Um, it moves fast when there isn't traffic, and it's a little daunting.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, all right, good stuff. Congratulations. You also won word association. You're undefeated. You're just on a roll. Um, and one more thing I like to ask of you before I go is I like to ask our guests. Give us. Give us one. Give us one LinkedIn account that we should be looking at to follow.

Speaker A: Okay. This is where I'm probably fairly boring, um, because probably one of the first things I check every day and I follow on LinkedIn is the American Banker. Okay. Yeah, just. It's a good kind of wide range of stuff for our industry. So I follow that on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Good call. How about any podcasts that you think people should. Should check out?

Speaker A: Well, other than yours, of course. Um, I would probably. I love to listen to sports. Um, kind of a nerd that way. And so I think, pardon my take, uh, barstool sports is. Is a big one for me. It's been, you know, enough edgy, but also just good conversation about different aspects of sports. I like that.

Speaker B: See, first, for sports My daily listen is just the Buster Olney's Baseball Tonight podcast. You know, n. Um, wholesome Buster is.

Speaker A: He's.

Speaker B: He's.

Speaker A: I think, old school.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, nice.

Speaker B: And how about a book?

Speaker A: So maybe along the same theme. Um, one of the books I'm reading right now, um, reading three books. Two of them I'm not loving too much, but the one I really do like is. It's called the League and it is the story of the founding of the NFL. So it follows everything from George Hallis and Mara and, you know, Rooney, all of those, those people who invested in making the NFL happen. And it was a lot harder looking back on it than I would have ever guessed. Uh, IOUs to players, all sorts of interesting negotiations, developing a draft, all of those concepts. It's been a fun read. It's a good book.

Speaker B: And they ended up finding moderate success with, With. With the NFL. It's not okay.

Speaker A: I think you could probably call that pretty good success. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, a book I have. I haven't. I. I'm still reading the book I shared with the audience I. Two weeks ago. So I'm not going to say it again, but I am. I just ordered a book. I learned about this Nazi scheme to try to cripple the British economy by printing millions and millions of pounds of British notes during World War II. Um, so I ordered a book called Kruger's Men to. To learn more about that. So maybe I'll follow up with you guys once I've actually had a chance to read that. But it sounds pretty interesting.

Speaker A: That sounds very interesting. Somewhat timely as well. So interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah. All right, Eric, this has been really fun. Appreciate you coming on.

Speaker A: Absolutely. We appreciate the time. It's been a lot of fun. Look forward to connecting again next time.

Speaker B: And that is it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Eric for joining me and please take a moment to leave us a five star review. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes and share it with your network. Also, if you aren't already Following FPC on LinkedIn, get out there and click that follow button. That account shares a ton of valuable information. Have a great day and we'll talk to you in a couple weeks.