FIS Links Fifth Third Clients To Real-Time Payments

Financial services firm FIS is linking customers of Fifth Third Bank to real-time payments, the companies said late last week.

FIS will bridge Fifth Third into The Clearing House’s (TCH) Real-Time Payments (RTP) system to enable real-time transacting for customers. Fifth Third said it will go live on the RTP system in early 2018 and will support business and consumer transactions. FIS first introduced its Real-Time Payments Incubator service earlier this year to enable financial institutions to access real-time payment capabilities and onboard to RTP.

“RTP promises to fundamentally transform the payments landscape in the United States,” said FIS Chief Operating Officer Anthony Jabbour. “We are excited to be working with TCH and our banking clients to realize benefits of this breakthrough new system.”

“As a global leader in payments technology, FIS has been a key partner of ours to realize the vision of ubiquitous real-time payments in the United States,” added TCH Executive Vice President of Product Development and Strategy Russ Waterhouse. “We’re excited to see Fifth Third adopting RTP, and we look forward to FIS’ help in bringing the benefits of this technology to many additional institutions.”

In October, FIS announced a partnership with Citi with a similar focus on expanding access to real-time payments services. That collaboration sees FIS working with Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions unit and uses CitiConnect application program interfaces (APIs) to integrate FIS’ Trax corporate payment capabilities into Citi treasury tools. At the time, Jabbour said the integrations would enable Citi corporate customers to access faster payments capabilities, among other benefits.

More recently, another financial institution, PNC, announced it was looping into TCH’s RTP service through a partnership with Finastra.

“RFP enables PNC to bring a new, leading-edge solution to market as the economy becomes increasingly digital,” said PNC’s Executive Vice President and Head of Product Management for Treasury Management, J. Christopher Ward, in a statement earlier this month. “The ability to make an immediate payment at any time, on any day of the week, with a real-time confirmation of the payment significantly transforms the way businesses and consumers make payments in the United States.”