Consumers today focus on one thing: speed. Quick, intuitive, and frictionless experiences are the expectation in our day-to-day lives.
Those same expectations apply for moving money. When a transaction is initiated, a consumer expects that money to move—they don’t want to wait around for funds to hit their accounts. They want the ability to send and receive money within seconds, regardless of the time or day of the week. Traditionally the payments industry has been slow to keep up with consumer demands—leaving us with the dreaded “processing” status. Even with the introduction of checks and credit cards, the exchange of hard currency has always been the most immediate payment method.
With the emergence of real-time payments (RTP), businesses now have the ability to transfer funds faster than ever before. This new standard allows companies to optimize cash flow, improve customer relationships and reduce the time spent on payment processing. It’s quickly becoming a must-have in payments—as nine out of 10 businesses are interested in adopting real-time payments.
Here are a few reasons why a business should embrace real-time payments:
Increase Your Bottom Line
From healthcare and retail to insurance and real estate, nearly every industry stands to benefit from real-time payments. The ability to send money instantly provides businesses with another opportunity to enhance their operational efficiences, improving cash flow, customer retention,forecasting and spending. Yet, as real-time payments take off among businesses—with 81% of business leaders expecting the new standard to dramatically transform the way business is done—they won’t completely overtake other digital payment methods. Instead, they can increase competitiveness of a business by demonstrating product value through the flexibility of multiple payment modalities including Same Day ACH or Push-to-Debit.
Create a Seamless Customer Experience
The pandemic continues to accelerate the shift to digital payments, with businesses and consumers turning to secure, contactless forms of transferring money. By 2026, digital natives will account for 59% of all consumers. In the era of instant gratification, business payments have to move instantly or risk losing customers. With real-time payments, businesses can send and receive payments within seconds. There are no delays on transfers because of weekends or holidays. This always-on payment modality can be processed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, allowing businesses to make payments in time-sensitive or emergency situations, as well as providing recipients with the flexibility of managing their money effectively.
Mitigate the Risk of Fraud
But, like all things in the digital age, there comes the risk of increased fraudulent activity. Cyber attacks against the financial sector jumped 238% this time last year, and it doesn’t look like things are starting to slow down. That’s why it’s important for businesses to implement new processes and best practices for risk management to help prevent problems from occurring. By regularly testing and assessing security measures and adding new layers of security like multi-factor authentication and data encryption, businesses will be prepared to thwart potential threats and ensure their funds are protected in the long term.
The emergence of real-time payments is changing the way money moves, offering businesses a competitive advantage and strategic value for understanding the overall health of their operations. With more and more businesses turning to simpler—and faster—payment solutions, it’s important to keep up with the pace of this digital transformation. Now is the time to embrace real-time payments, the soon-to-be standard for money transactions.
