The Clearing House Names Rusiru Gunasena to Oversee RTP

The Clearing House (TCH) has named 20-year payments industry veteran Rusiru Gunasena to oversee its real-time payments (RTP) network.

According to a Tuesday (Aug. 2) news release, Gunasena has joined the payments company as senior vice president for RTP product management and strategy. He will succeed Steve Ledford, who is retiring after nine years with TCH and 41 years in the payments industry.

Gunasena joins TCH following a stint as managing director of the JHA PayCenter payments hub at Jack Henry, where he oversaw the onboarding of more than 170 banks and credit unions to the RTP network.

“Rusiru’s knowledge of the payments industry and experience with onboarding new financial institutions to JHA PayCenter will directly translate to helping to accelerate growth of the RTP network, providing unparalleled control and transparency to users,” said Russ Waterhouse, executive vice president, product development and strategy, The Clearing House.

The release said Gunasena will be responsible for overseeing the growth of the RTP network, which the company noted reaches 61% of U.S. demand deposit accounts and has more than 260 financial institutions on its network.

PYMNTS collaborated with TCH recently on the “Real-Time Payments Tracker,” which found that a majority of companies already using real-time payments plan to use them more often.

Read more: Real-Time Payments Become Corporate Cornerstone to Better Liquidity Management

Of those companies already engaged with real-time payments, almost a quarter of them said they plan to increase the payments they receive in real time in the next year, while 69% said they expect to make more real-time payments.

As we wrote last month, those faster payments have revolutionized payment practices and set the stage for other advancements and new business opportunities that couldn’t exist otherwise. The RTP network offers the means for settlement within two to three seconds at any hour of any day, allowing for enhanced client experience and improved liquidity management.