The Clearing House ups its game in Real-Time Payments adoption
Since the adoption of the 2nd Payment Services Directive (PSD2), real-time payments in Europe have raced ahead from other nations or regions. Lagging behind in the adoption of real-time payments, the North American commercial payments industry is playing catch-up. In this race, The Clearing House, the industry consortium which operates US-based payments networks is at the forefront.
In its latest move, The Clearing House partnered with software provider Alacriti and BMO Financial Group. Last week, FIS teamed up with The Clearing House to provide real-time payment processing (RTP) and settlement to small-to-medium-sized banks and credit unions along with their customers.
Alacriti works with banks and credit unions to help them get on board with digital payments systems and provide them with the cloud-native platform to access the RTP network, and has partnered with The Clearing House to accelerate the adoption of the real-time payment among banks and credit unions.
Using this RTP network, Alacriti will enable these banks and credit unions to deliver new products and services which will fuel the adoption of real-time payments among their corporate and retail customers.
Meanwhile, The Clearing House has partnered with the Canadian investment bank, BMO Financial Group which provides personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services. Under this agreement, US business customers will be allowed to receive funds from any sending participant bank in the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network.
“BMO business customers will have the ability to send payments via the Real-Time Payments network in 2021,” the press release noted.
In separate news, BMO also partnered with Mastercard to launch BMO Global Pay in the US. Under this, BMO business customers would be able to send funds to more than 30 countries using Mastercard cross-border services. Customers can view the final exchange rate before sending the payment and track the status of the payment from the time it has been approved. This service is already available with BMO customers in Canada.