In a reversal of roles, JP Morgan Chase is helping fintech firm, Digit. Digit offers consumers an app that tracks consumers’ spending patterns and sweeps unallocated funds automatically to a savings product. Consumers can establish specific goals and reasons for savings, such as paying down debt or saving for a vacation. The real benefit for consumers is that they don’t need to take action to move funds to savings; this is accomplished automatically for them. Where Chase bank participates is by providing a faster money movement solution between the savings product and a consumers’ checking account if the consumer needs money back in their checking account to spend. Details from a PaymentsSource article:
The partnership allows consumers to instantly move money from a Digit savings account into a checking account. Digit will be one of the first companies to deploy The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments network (RTP), with Digit’s access to the RTP coming through JP Morgan Chase which operates on RTP’s rails.
It’s the first time Digit’s customers will have an option to obtain their money instantly through the Instant Withdrawals feature.
This is a rare sighting of the use of The Clearing House’s RTP system beyond commercial payments. The article provides further details that funds can be moved to the consumer’s account within 30 minutes. This suggest that Chase is likely using more than just the RTP platform to move funds. RTP processes within seconds, but not all financial intuitions where Digit users may bank are connected to the RTP platform. In these instances, it is likely that the debit push network are being used to move funds. These transactions sometimes take a few minutes to be made available, depending on how quickly the receiving financial institution posts these transactions.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group