Eight years after the launch of the RTP® instant payments network, The Clearing House recorded an exceptional year in 2024. On Wednesday, January 8, the consortium announced that more than $246 billion had been transferred on the RTP network in 2024, an increase of 94% compared to 2023. The volume increased by 38% to 343 million. Up to 285,000 businesses use the RTP network each month for business-to-business (B2B) transactions.
Jim ColassanoSenior Vice President, RTP Business Product Management at The exchange centersaid the ability to send money instantly, 24/7, 365 days a year, is increasingly being adopted in a variety of use cases – and by users as well.
“The feedback we get, not only from consumers, but also from the business community, is that when you see it,” he said of instant payments, “when you actually experience it , both from the point of view of origination and from the point of view of reception. , you want to do more, you want this to be the payment mechanism that you would like to use.
Double-digit growth in volume and value
This has been progressing slowly since 2017, Colassano added. Metrics on the volume and total value of payments flowing through the network “both tell very important stories,” he told PYMNTS. “We are a retail payments network, so transaction volume is significant, and that means consumers as a whole are starting to adopt and use real-time payments and instant payments. And that’s a very good indicator of where we’re headed and how much growth is to come.
As evidenced by average transaction values, he said, there’s another important piece to the story: Businesses are moving their own payments onto the network, even though B2B payments are still dominated by paper checks .
Colassano noted that the increase in B2B payments has helped increase the average transaction value by 40%, to $719 in 2024, from $514 the previous year.
“There’s that immediate gratification of knowing that the payment was actually received by the person you’re sending it to,” Colassano said.
Right now, Colassano said, the RTP network has significant reach — covering 70% of homes in the U.S., which incentivizes more companies to bring more volume to the network as well.
“Vibrancy in transaction volumes is actually an indicator of repeat payments, of increased activity,” Colassano said, “and it builds on itself, because success tends to build on itself -even”. There was an additional tailwind, Colassano said, from the fact that FedNow launched last year, bringing awareness to instant payments, which Colassano called “the public square.” In addition to the marketing and success we have already established, this has also helped reinforce the message that RTP and real-time payments are here to stay,” he said.
The evolution of use cases
When asked by PYMNTS about the evolving use cases in the consumer and commercial spheres, Colassano said for consumers: “For gig workers who want to get paid at the end of their shift, the ability to Getting paid using RTP anytime day or night or on weekends after their shift ended, was a real value proposition for them. And since then, we’ve seen that start to shift towards more traditional salaries. This means that non-gig employees have access to their funds faster than a traditional pay cycle would allow.
“We’re also starting to see more activity where money is moving from closed-loop networks,” Colassano said, “toward a bank account where you can get more utility out of that money… (and) move away from digital wallets which can be used only for limited purposes We also see a lot of activity and also the gaming space where people withdraw their gaming wallets and… their winnings are transferred to their bank accounts.
On the business side of the equation, Colassano said, businesses large and small use RTP to manage cash flow and use instant payments to concentrate cash between accounts they have at different banks or to merchant financing.
“We’re seeing a lot of applications that are moving into the FinTech space also starting to take advantage of real-time payments simply because they operate 24/7,” he said.
Looking ahead, Colassano said the recent decision to increase transaction limits to $10 million should help drive more B2B traffic. Asked about security concerns, he said that, particularly for B2B transactions, “multiple protocols are in place to ensure that higher value transactions are subject to a fair amount of scrutiny.” Consumer-initiated payments, he said, also benefit from increased security through prompts that inform them that transactions are irrevocable and ask for confirmation that they actually want to continue with the transaction.
“The message I want to convey to everyone,” he told PYMNTS, “is that instant payments are growing and growing. We’re seeing more and more use cases on the network every day…we’ve reached a tipping point and we’re heading into 2025 with confidence that we’ll start to see an even bigger explosion of real-time payments on the network than the one we saw in 2024.”
