Real-Time Payments Threaten Wire Dominance

Real-time payments are moving beyond speed. With networks raising transaction ceilings, companies are beginning to treat instant transfers as a tool for high-value use cases once reserved for slower rails. The speed that has transformed consumer-facing transactions, such as disbursements, now is a valuable hallmark in commercial settings as well.

That’s a central theme of the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “The Real-Time Payments World Map,” which tracks adoption across 100-plus markets. The research, done in collaboration with The Clearing House, takes stock of a number of new initiatives. The findings include the fact that the U.S. FedNow® Service recently doubled its payment cap from $500,000 to $1 million, while The Clearing House has expanded guidelines for on-behalf-of transactions, enabling new forms of business payments. These shifts signal that the conversation is no longer only about making payments faster — but about making them bigger, more flexible and more central to enterprise finance.

Key data points from the report highlight how personalization and real-time functionality are influencing adoption:

The FedNow Service raised its transaction ceiling from $500,000 to $1 million, unlocking opportunities for higher-value use cases such as real estate and B2B payments.

Comerica Bank executed one of the first on-behalf-of (OBO) transactions on The Clearing House’s RTP® network, enabling businesses to process payroll and marketplace payouts instantly.

In Canada, API-driven real-time payments powered by Interac are gaining traction in lending, payroll, and insurance, helping enterprises manage high-volume transactions more efficiently.

These developments suggest that the era of small-ticket instant transfers is giving way to large-value applications that rival traditional wire or ACH payments. Payroll disbursements, business-to-business settlements, and even real estate transactions are now within reach of real-time systems — a use case leap that could accelerate adoption across industries.

Other findings in the report underscore how global the trend has become. QR-based payments are gaining ground in North America, with pilot programs showing how a simple code scan can settle bills instantly. In Canada, API-powered real-time payment offerings are being rolled out for enterprise users in lending and insurance. Across Europe, Asia and Africa, dozens of markets have gone live in recent years, many introducing frameworks that support both consumer convenience and enterprise-grade transactions.

Higher transaction limits are more than a technical update; they are expanding the imagination of what real-time payments can do. As regulators, banks, and technology providers adjust, the next phase of instant payments may look less like an upgrade to card rails and more like a rethinking of the high-value payments ecosystem across a variety of use cases.