Real-Time Payments Move Into More Markets and More Workflows

Real-time payments are no longer waiting for a killer app. From Pix becoming an everyday payment method in Brazil to RTP and FedNow moving deeper into U.S. business payments, checkout and cross-border use cases, the rails are increasingly in place.

South America shows what happens when instant payments become a mainstream payment method. The July Real-Time Payments World Map from PYMNTS Intelligence and The Clearing House puts Brazil at the center of the trend. Pix has more than 150 million users, roughly 70% of Brazil’s population, and processes more transactions than Visa and Mastercard combined. Its reach is also moving beyond domestic payments, with Boku enabling merchants to use Pix for account-to-account payments with domestic and cross-border settlement.

Colombia is demonstrating that Brazil may not be a regional one-off. Bre-B surpassed 500 million transactions and registered more than 100 million payment keys within its first five months. Meanwhile, projections  estimate real-time payments could add $19.3 billion to Argentina’s GDP by 2028 and bring another 1.1 million consumers into the formal financial system.

In the U.S., the business case for instant B2B payments is becoming harder for banks to ignore. A July 13 PYMNTS Intelligence report found that 88% of financial institutions rate the ROI of instant B2B payments as high or very high, including 82% of institutions that do not yet offer an instant rail. Three-quarters already offer The Clearing House’s RTP network to business clients, while 40% offer the FedNow Service.

The missing piece may be what happens above the rails. A new X9.150 national QR standard could give merchants one interoperable way to initiate account-based payments at checkout. PYMNTS reported July 14 that the standard could allow a common QR experience to route transactions across RTP, FedNow, ACH or potentially emerging digital-money networks, reducing the need for consumers or merchants to care which rail sits underneath the transaction.

But instant payments still have to beat “good enough.” Businesses already using real-time payments rate their returns roughly 20 percentage points higher than nonusers. Yet nearly one-quarter of nonusers say their current payment methods already meet their needs, while integration with ERP, treasury and accounting systems remains an adoption hurdle. That makes workflow integration, rather than raw transaction speed, an important battleground.

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