Mastercard and The Clearing
House (TCH) announced an extended multi-year partnership in which the organizations
will collaborate on innovative tools to help consumers, businesses and
governments evolve and embrace the digital economy through real-time payments
(RTP) adoption on TCH’s RTP network, according to a joint press release.
The companies said the partnership
represents a continuation of Mastercard’s role as the exclusive instant
payments software provider for TCH’s RTP network, enabling both companies to
integrate new instant payment use cases across a range of payment flows, the
release explains.
Instant payments became a
reality in the U.S. in 2017 when The Clearing House launched the RTP network,
the first new payment rail in 40 years designed and powered by Mastercard, the
release states. For consumers, RTP provides instant access and confidence that
a payment is received 24/7. For businesses, RTP is intended to enhance value by
simplifying payments for customers, enabling faster wage disbursements,
improving liquidity management, and optimizing capital workflows, and for
governments, it helps activate local economies through disbursement and
settlement.
“Technology is providing
consumers and businesses greater choice in how they want to pay and be paid,” Mastercard
President, Americas, Linda Kirkpatrick said in the release. “Our long-term
partnership with The Clearing House supports choice in payments through the
enablement of modern and ubiquitous real-time rails for bank-owned payments. We’re
pleased to extend and enhance our support of The Clearing House and its owner
banks to deliver on our mutual goals to provide safety, reliability, and
efficiency of real-time payments.”
The release notes that real-time
payments offer increased speed in payment processing, data exchange and real-time
messaging, as well as 24/7/365 availability. Mastercard and The Clearing House
continue to support, invest and develop real-time account-to-account
technologies that enable the transmission of rich payment and non-payment data
both in the U.S. for the RTP network and around the world.
“The Clearing House and
Mastercard designed and delivered the RTP network, the premier instant payment
platform in the United States, and have a strong history of working together to
deliver innovative, scalable, and secure products,” The Clearing House
Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Lee Alexander said in
the release. “The expanded partnership will help both companies design the next
generation of instant payment capabilities for financial institutions and their
customers.”
TCH’s RTP network’s faster
payment capabilities are available to financial institutions that hold close to
90 precent of U.S. demand deposit accounts. The RTP network was built for
financial institutions of all sizes and serves as a platform for innovation
allowing financial institutions to deliver new products and services to their
customers. Financial institutions can integrate into the RTP network directly,
through third-party service providers, bankers’ banks and corporate credit
unions.