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The Brookfield, Wis.-based financial services technology provider Fiserv has formed a partnership with The Clearing House, giving Fiserv's thousands of financial institution clients – including credit unions – access to real-time payments (RTPs).
According to Monday's announcement from Fiserv, credit union clients will have the ability to enable real-time consumer and business payments via the company's NOW Gateway, which is connected to The Clearing House's RTP network. The Clearing House is currently the only U.S. vendor enabling access to RTPs, which can be defined as fund transfers that can be initiated any time and via any channel that are also certified, final, immediately available, instantly settled and confirmed to the payee and payer.
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Types of RTP services that financial institutions will be able to offer their customers or members as a result of the new partnership include Zelle person-to-person payments, payouts for gig economy work or insurance claims, interbank account transfers and real-time bill payments, Fiserv said.
"The demand for real-time payments continues to accelerate, as evidenced by the consistent double-digit year-over-year growth we see in real-time P2P payments at Fiserv," Matthew Wilcox, president of digital payments and data aggregation at Fiserv, stated. "To remain competitive, financial institutions must offer real-time payment capabilities. That's why we are committed to making real-time implementation easier for any financial institution, from regional bank to community bank, to credit union. Our work with The Clearing House to integrate the RTP network with our NOW Gateway is the latest advancement towards this goal."
Russ Waterhouse, EVP of product and strategy at The Clearing House, added, "The RTP network has seen substantial recent growth, and we will continue to expand the power of real-time payments with Fiserv. The connection of Fiserv to the RTP network can provide financial institutions with an accessible real-time payment offering that will deliver significant benefits to their customers and provide competitive advantage."
At the Money20/20 fintech conference last October, Fiserv unveiled its NOW Network, which is designed to simplify the process of making payments beyond the point of sale. A video posted by Fiserv in November provided three examples of how the NOW Network could potentially transform the way consumers pay and manage their money. In the first, NOW sends a renter a mobile notification stating that his rent is due. He selects a "split" option, selects his roommate's name from his contacts, then sends his roommate a payment request for his portion of the rent. NOW later notifies the renter that his full rent is ready, and he can send the payment to his landlord immediately or schedule the payment for a later date.
In the second example, a consumer receives a mobile NOW notification stating he has insufficient funds in his account to complete a bill payment, and is given the option of making an instant transfer to avoid overdrawing his account. And in the third, a group of friends take a selfie during a restaurant meal, and when it's time to settle the bill, one friend uploads a photo of a friend who owes her for the meal to the NOW platform; NOW then identifies her based on her photo and sends a payment request to her on her friend's behalf.
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Natasha Chilingerian
Natasha Chilingerian has been immersed in the credit union industry for over a decade. She first joined CU Times in 2011 as a freelance writer, and following a two-year hiatus from 2013-2015, during which time she served as a communications specialist for Xceed Financial Credit Union (now Kinecta Federal Credit Union), she re-joined the CU Times team full-time as managing editor. She was promoted to executive editor in 2019. In the earlier days of her career, Chilingerian focused on news and lifestyle journalism, serving as a writer and editor for numerous regional publications in Oregon, Louisiana, South Carolina and the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, she holds experience in marketing copywriting for companies in the finance and technology space. At CU Times, she covers People and Community news, cybersecurity, fintech partnerships, marketing, workplace culture, leadership, DEI, branch strategies, digital banking and more. She currently works remotely and splits her time between Southern California and Portland, Ore.
