Critically important to understand the Inconvenient Truth about banks and e-payments is that banks profit from the inefficiencies in the current system. For example, while Check 21 has enabled banks to clear paper checks on a same-day basis, they credit funds to business and consumer accounts based on the Fed’s official clearing times. Similarly, banks frequently hold funds from electronic bill payments for a day before transmitting to billers. Where these payments require completion via paper checks, banks will likely hold the funds in their own accounts until the paper items clear – depriving deposit account holders of the benefits of their funds.

So the short answer to the question in the title of this article is that banks don’t want to be better at B2B payments. Or B2C payments for that matter. The US lags the rest of the industrialized world in real-time payments & clearance. It is not an accident.