Truist is launching a bill pay solution for RTP, introducing an alias-based Request-for-Payment (RfP) platform within RTP, the instant payments platform operated by The Clearing House.
The solution will leverage 150 million available mobile and email tokens to keep user data confidential.
Although the service will be available to both consumers and businesses, Truist highlighted the benefits for large corporate billers. These include immediate acknowledgment of payment receipt—speeding up the reconciliation process—and faster access to funds, which should improve liquidity.
The financial institution also noted that the system would strengthen data management and security, while potentially reducing costs.
Expanding to B2B
There has been much speculation about when real-time payments networks will play a larger role in the U.S. payments landscape, and there have been significant recent strides in this direction. For example, the RTP network saw the total value of its processed instant payments nearly double in 2024.
While most payments on RTP were initiated by businesses, nearly all of them last year were business-to-consumer transactions. In an effort to expand its use to business-to-business payments, the Clearing House raised the network’s payment cap from $1 million to $10 million.
A Step in the Right Direction
Some of the proposed business use cases for RTP have been real-estate and supply chain transactions. However, both RTP and FedNow haven’t gained traction with retailers because they currently only allow users to send money—there is no request functionality.
Although it’s typically the customer who taps their debit card in a retail store, it is actually the merchant who initiates the payment request for these transactions. Currently, this functionality is not supported on RTP or FedNow. Additionally, the networks aren’t yet able to provide merchants with an approval code when a payment is declined.
While these issues will likely keep instant payments on the backburner for U.S. retailers, RTP’s expanded bill pay capability is a step in the right direction.
