Wells River Savings Bank To Access TCH’s RTP Network

Wells River Savings Bank will gain access to the RTP® network built by The Clearing House (TCH) via SHAZAM, Inc., according to a Tuesday (Jan. 12) announcement from the Vermont-based financial institution (FI), which noted that Atlantic Community Bankers Bank (ACBB) will offer funding agent functions.

“Our customers need financial technology tools that align with their personal and business needs. Providing real-time payments is an important step for us, allowing us to deliver important new functionality to our customers, thereby improving their customer experience,” Wells River Savings Bank CFO and COO Judy Lavely said in the announcement.

Wells River says it will provide clients with “the most modern payments infrastructure in the world” through the RTP network, letting individuals and companies have instantaneous availability to money received around the clock with immediate clearing and settlement between the sending and receiving FIs.

SHAZAM is providing the community bank with access to the RTP network via its SHAZAM Pay faster payments gateway, which will enable FIs of different sizes to cost-effectively implement real-time payments via an application programming interface (API), according to the announcement.

“As a nationwide network, it’s important to SHAZAM that our clients have access to the RTP network and accompanying data so they can offer intelligent, real-time payments capabilities to their account holders,” Janet LaFrence, the faster payments program manager at SHAZAM, said in the announcement.

Whether it meant helping small companies get their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) payments, accommodating virtual mortgage closing and escrow activity, or getting funds to people delivering food, the pandemic has imposed much change on the financial services space in a small amount of time.

“A lot of what the pandemic did was force our industry to truly be digital, to facilitate frictionless transactions,” TCH Senior Vice President Elena Whisler said in a recent conversation with PYMNTS. “It also pushed our industry to think about ways to provide faster availability of funds to people and businesses in need.”

In other words, the coronavirus has brought about increasing usage – and use cases – for TCH’s RTP network.