U.S. Bancorp has added payment requests via The Clearing House's RTP network to the bank's electronic billing service, enabling businesses to offer instant transaction processing to consumers.
By integrating Request for Payment (RfP) services to the RTP real-time payment rail, the $559 billion-asset bank can offer utilities, mobile operators and other businesses the ability to settle transactions immediately. That means consumers can pay bills upon receipt, or schedule payment at a time when they have sufficient funds.
In addition to using the e-billing service, U.S. Bank is tying RfP to SinglePoint, the Minneapolis-based bank's treasury portal. It is also enabling requests through application programming interfaces via the bank's developer portal and through direct file transmission.
“Real-time payments are transforming and enriching the entire bill payment experience," Rich Erario, executive vice president and head of Global Treasury Management at U.S. Bank, said in a press release.
A group of 23 large banks and technology vendors Jack Henry and Fiserv have pledged to link RfP to The Clearing House's RTP rail, a coalition that would cover about 40% of the U.S. banking market.
The RfP instant settlement capability is part of a border attempt to add to the use cases for real-time payments. About 150 banks support real-time payments through The Clearing House, out of about 4,500 banks in the U.S. The primary use case is peer-to-peer transactions, though most banks plan to add other payment types such as insurance disbursements.
The government-backed real-time rail, FedNow, is not expected to launch for another two years.
