Another player jumped into themarket for speedier payments Monday as San Francisco-basedclearXchange launched a product that will allow users to makereal-time person-to-person, business-to-consumer andgovernment-to-consumer payments using only mobile phone numbers andemail addresses.

Five of the six largest banks in the United States and severalregional financial institutions have already provided 100 milliononline banking consumers with access to the clearXchange networkthrough their online banking platforms, the company said in arelease. Anyone with a U.S. bank account can access thecompany's services through its website, it said.

“As people and businesses increasingly transition everydayactivities from traditional to online channels, they expect thingsto be completed faster,” clearXchange CEO Mike Kennedy said. “Thisincludes financial transactions, particularly those with a need forreal-time funds availability such as sending emergency money tokids, paying rent at the last minute or receiving funds for anaccident claim or disaster relief.”

More than 50% of clearXchange-enabled transactions are alreadycompleted in real-time when customers transfer money within thesame bank, and the new technology will enable real-time transfersfrom bank-to-bank, it said.

The news comes on the heels of MasterCard's launch of its own real-time payments system andNACHA'srecent move to offer real-time payments. MasterCard's product,MasterCard Send, allows customers to send funds in real-time toother bank accounts, mobile wallets and cash agent outlets, as wellas MasterCard and non-MasterCard cards. NACHA plans to add two newsame-day settlement windows to the ACH network, increasing themovement of funds between financial institutions from once a day tothree times per day. The rule also requires all receivingdepository financial institutions to accept same-daytransactions.

ClearXchange, founded in 2011, said it acts as a securegatekeeper that enables users to associate a piece of publicinformation – a mobile number or email address – to a piece ofprivate information, such as bank account data. The actual transferof funds occurs between the sender's bank and the receiver's bank.Only checking and savings accounts at U.S. banks work with thesystem, according to the company's FAQs.

Member banks include Bank of America, CapitalOne, Chase,FirstBank, USBank and Wells Fargo, but membership is open to banksand credit unions of all sizes, the company said. Look for memberfinancial institutions to roll out the real-time offering tocustomers and members over the next year, clearXchange said.