Payments Nerds

David Watson, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Clearing House, joined the Leaders in Payments Podcast to discuss the rapidly evolving world of instant payments, digital currencies, how The Clearing House has evolved during its 170-plus years in the banking and payments space, career advice for aspiring payments professionals, and the safety and soundness of payments rails. This special...

Margaret Weichert, Chief Product Officer at The Clearing House, joined the Women Leaders in Payments series to discuss her career journey in payments. This episode originally appeared as part of the Leaders in Payments Podcast .   On this special episode, Margaret discusses the complexities of leadership and team dynamics, and she candidly addresses the unique challenges faced by female leaders, i...

For many financial institutions (FIs), adding send capabilities is the next step in the instant payments journey. Moving from being a receive-only bank to one that also offers send requires additional functionality, including more robust fraud scoring, enhanced security features, such as multi-factor authentication or biometrics, and operational and technology considerations. IncredibleBank, a Wis...

While many financial institutions initially join the RTP® network as receive-only participants, adding sending capabilities can be done relatively quickly with a sound business plan, a thoughtful approach, and a great technology partner. ABNB Federal Credit Union, which joined the RTP network a few short months ago (May 2024), is already moving to become a send/receive participant. Cassandra Tucke...

Joe Casali, host of NEACH’s Wrestling Payments podcast, joins the show to discuss what he has learned about current instant payments trends while recording his podcast, and previews his interview with Rusiru Gunasena, SVP of RTP® Product Management at The Clearing House. Rusiru joined the Wrestling Payments Podcast earlier this month to discuss the RTP networks growth, how instant payments meet cu...

Making sure employees are paid correctly each pay period is a primary focus of corporate human resources and finance teams, and their payroll provider. Usually payroll runs smoothly and employees are happy to receive their pay.  However, often there are payroll exceptions and emergencies that require employers to find alternative ways to get pay to their employees urgently. Given the nature and sc...

In the transportation industry, freight factoring is a vital way for trucking and shipping companies to get paid on quickly for  freight and shipments that have been successfully delivered. These payments help trucking companies maintain positive working capital instead of waiting 30 to 90 days for an invoice to be paid by the manufacturer or supplier (the standard payment timeline in the trucking...

Transit agencies and tolling authorities process millions of payments each day. Consumers and businesses pay tolls or mass transit fares to go to work, deliver goods or to simply go on vacation. It is important to make sure that electronic tolling tag accounts or mass transit accounts are funded so customers don’t miss payments or face fines for not paying tolls. Checks take time to process and AC...

If you have ever participated in a real-estate transaction, either as a buyer or seller, you quickly realize that real estate doesn’t move as quickly as other transactions in today’s economy. This applies to payments as well, which typically still happen by check (most common), wire transfer or ACH payment. All three of these payment types can cause confusion, delays or errors in a real estate dea...

Consumers often need access to funds to cover an unexpected expense, such as a flat tire or a repair to a faulty hot water heater. While there are a variety of loans available on the market, often the earliest a customer could get money into their bank account was the next day. Grain, which analyzes a consumer’s cash flow to determine eligibility, now sends loan payments instantly to customers via...

The fastest-growing use case on the RTP network is real-time pay and earned wage access (EWA). To give you an idea of how fast it is growing, from Q1 to Q2 this year, Instant Payroll grew 104%! RTP, in particular, makes it possible for wages to be instantly sent to a worker’s bank account … so they can use it just like cash, on the same day to pay bills, buy groceries, or pay emergency expenses. S...

RTP, the nation’s newest payments rail, launched in November 2017 and is now celebrating its 5-year anniversary. RTP transaction volume continues to grow at an average of 10% each quarter, and dollar value also continues to grow at the same pace. There are over 280 banks and credit unions on the network, with more joining each week. And what is really interesting about the growth, is that it is co...

Lithia Motors, one of the largest automobile dealers in the United States and owner of the Driveway.com used-car marketplace, recently started to send real-time payments to sellers on Driveway.com to help remove friction from the payment – which was traditionally done via check, ACH, or sometimes cash. Now, with real-time payments over the RTP® network, sellers can receive payment for their vehicl...

CHIPS,  the high-value payment system from TCH is highly efficient in its use of liquidity when compared to other major payment systems around the world, and effectively serves as the liquidity savings mechanism for the entire U.S. large-value payments system. It also underscores the nature of CHIPS as an early settlement system that reduces operational risk for participants, end users, and the fi...

Real-time payments over the RTP® Network are helping to solve real-life business problems every day. In this episode of Payments Nerds, our speakers discuss real-time payments for corporate cards, which are commonly used by a company’s employees for a variety of expenses including corporate travel, inventory purchases, supplier payments, booking venues for events, and much more. But what happens w...

One of the most exciting enhancements to the RTP® network this year is the production availability of request for payment (RfP). For corporates, RfP provides a business with the ability to send a bill, along with the request for payment, directly to a customer’s banking app, so the customer can review the bill, and pay it all from the app. RfP allows bank and credit union customers to send payment...

Recently, the RTP network has started to grow quite rapidly. Currently, there are about 138 financial institutions on the network and over 100 of those have joined in just the past 12 months. Banks and credit unions that haven’t joined yet tend to see the value in real-time payments. They just haven’t figured out their full real-time payment strategy yet, and naturally, they have a lot of question...

Sports wagering is exploding in popularity since the Supreme Court decision in 2018 to allow it in the US.  And that explosion is fueled by the power of real time payments. To learn more, we invited David Roe, Chief Operating Officer at Mazooma, and Laura Listwan, SVP, Head of Commercial Payments Products at Fifth Third Bank, onto the show. David and Laura have been instrumental in pioneering the...

Most people only think about payments when sending or receiving money, but behind the scenes, as many #paymentnerds know, there’s a number of moving parts in the payment process. Rachel Pike, Chief Growth Officer at Modern Treasury, guides us through the roadmap of the payment lifecycle to discuss:  The evolution of real time payments (RTP) Delivering a delightful customer experience  RTP system’s...

Across America, the need for at-home banking has risen, along with the need for real-time capabilities. As more Americans have taken a hold of their finances, more financial services are moving the needle faster than ever before to meet customer expectations of 24/7/365 control and access. Carlos Rotger & Steven Bernstein were guests on the Payments Nerds podcast, talking specifically about a...

For small businesses, cash flow is one of the most crucial aspects of business right now. Will you have enough money coming in to operate the business in a way that is sustainable? Do you have access to your funds when you need them? What happens when at close of business on Saturday, you need funds to open on Sunday and don’t have access to them? How do you operate when your funds are tied up in...

As consumers, most of us expect great digital experiences.  And COVID-19 is converting the last holdouts to Amazon. It’s time we ask the same of financial institutions. On the latest episode of Payments Nerds, I sit down with Wade Hobbs, Vice President, Solution Strategy at Viewpointe, and Susan Kent, Enterprise Technology Strategist at Truist.  We discuss the race behind the scenes at some of the...

Our listeners keep asking us one question: What are folks actually doing with RTP® payments in their everyday lives? Today, we want to answer that question. In this episode of Payments Nerds, I speak with Jeff Rayis, Director of Treasury & Financial Management, Michigan State University, and Parker Nolan, FMI Scholar at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business. We discuss MSU'...

Often, banks, especially community banks, will say there's no demand for RTP®. No one's asking for this, they say. But some folks on the ground argue that isn't so. What's the scoop on RTP® and fintechs? In this episode of Payments Nerds, I speak with Jesse Honigberg, technology chief of staff, and Matt Brazda, product manager, at Cross River. Their company is helping empower millions of customers...

Something went wrong with your direct deposit. Maybe your employee got underpaid, or the wrong deductions got taken out. Whatever the reason, their check is messed up, and they need it fixed right now. How do you fix it? Traditionally, you had to go through direct deposit, which took days. Now, however, Paychex has created a newer, faster way.  In this episode of Payments Nerds, I speak with Eric...