Yeah I'm failing to see how this replaces either of those benefits...

Credit card rewards are really not worth it. These programs are largely funded by the fees that are charged to merchants which are ultimately passed on to you at time of purchase.

I would much rather have reduced costs of goods rather than have paltry credit card reward programs.

We have something like this in Canada, Interac

Interac is not the same thing at all, the US equivalent is Zelle.

FedNow does instant EFT payments, which is something Canada does not have.

Processing transactions with credit cards incurs fees from middlemen and unnecessarily complicates the merchant-buyer relationship. The merchant ends up paying these fees and ultimately passes this cost to the consumer in the form of a 3-5% or more markup of goods. In some cases, even cash customers are paying the hidden markup as well.

With FedNow, this has the potential to bypass all of this messiness and severely undercut debit and credit card processing networks. Thus slowly bleeding them out of market share.

I can definitely see a new market segment of payment processing which disrupts the existing status quo. Could very easily cover expenses of running the operation on a shoe string budget, charge 1-2 cents per transaction, and become profitable in just under a year (assuming high adoption).

In the end, smaller merchants are able to compete or in some cases undercut bigger stores since they are saving money on CC fees. Consumer has the benefit of more competition in the market and getting that better price. Overall decreased cost of living.