Why Time, Not Money, Now Defines Lender Value

When it comes to borrowing, timing has always mattered. But today, it’s not just about interest rates, loan terms or approval odds. It’s about speed.

Increasingly, borrowers don’t just want their funds fast; they expect them instantly.

The latest PYMNTS Intelligence in the 2025 Money Mobility Tracker®, “Race Against Time: How Urgency Shapes the Demand for Instant Lending Payouts,” a collaboration with Ingo Payments, reveals how the lending sector is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by consumer urgency and enabled by banks and FinTechs racing to modernize their infrastructure.

Nearly half of all borrowing disbursements are now instant, up sharply from just a few years ago. For more than 1 in 4 borrowers, “instant” means within 30 minutes.

This new reality is rewriting the rules of lending, from back-end technology stacks to consumer psychology, where waiting is no longer acceptable.

Rise of Instant Lending

Per the report, borrowing disbursements have quietly become the leading use case for instant payments, overtaking investment payouts and other disbursement categories for the first time since 2018.

The shift isn’t accidental. On the demand side, consumers face growing financial pressures from rent and medical bills to debt repayments and essential daily expenses. On the supply side, financial institutions (FIs) see loan disbursements as the most compelling application for real-time payments.

An overwhelming 86% of FIs now identify loan payouts as a use case that would benefit most from instant rails.

Yet for all the progress, legacy systems still slow the flow of funds in many institutions. Lenders are often saddled with outdated, fragmented software environments that make disbursements clunky and inefficient. Borrowers who expect funds within minutes are often left waiting days. This gap between expectation and reality has created urgency not only among consumers but also within boardrooms, where “instant” is becoming synonymous with competitive survival.

Read the report: Race Against Time: How Urgency Shapes the Demand for Instant Lending Payouts

Urgency as an Imperative

At the same time, the psychology of borrowing is shifting. For a growing share of borrowers, waiting for funds is no longer tolerable. The PYMNTS data underscores this psychology: Urgency is not limited to emergencies but extends to general expectations of convenience and control. More than half of borrowers said they would choose instant loan payouts even when given other options.

Seventy-three percent are willing to pay for the privilege. That willingness extends across loan types, from personal to consolidation to generic consumer loans.

This introduces an intriguing business model question. For decades, lenders monetized loans through interest rates and fees tied to credit risk. Now, there is a new axis of monetization: time. For borrowers, paying for speed is less about indulgence and more about necessity. For lenders, it’s a way to align services with demand while justifying investments in faster infrastructure.

Still, legacy core banking systems were never designed for real-time settlement. They relied on batch processing, overnight reconciliations, and siloed software. Instant disbursements demand something different: interoperable platforms, API-driven connections, and new risk and compliance protocols that operate in milliseconds rather than days.

The broader cultural shift may be the most consequential change of all. In an era where groceries arrive in under an hour and rideshares appear in minutes, waiting for money feels anomalous.

This raises a challenge for lenders. Speed is no longer a differentiator; it is fast becoming table stakes. The institutions that fail to adapt risk not only losing market share but also eroding trust. For consumers accustomed to on-demand everything, slow disbursements don’t just feel inconvenient. They feel broken.

In the end, the clock now ticks differently in lending. Every minute counts, and those who can’t deliver instantly may find themselves permanently out of time.