From Access to Activation: Why Instant Payments Need More Than Connectivity

Instant payments in the United States have reached a new phase. Both the RTP^® network and the FedNow^® Service have pushed these payments further into the mainstream, giving more financial institutions (FIs) the ability to connect to real-time rails. Still, access has not translated into full activation.

Many banks can receive instant payments, but far fewer are confidently sending them. This gap matters because the value of instant payments depends not simply on connectivity but also on usage. Businesses and consumers increasingly expect payments to move with greater speed, transparency and certainty. However, many institutions remain constrained by fraud concerns, operational complexity, unclear routing logic and legacy infrastructure.

The result is a market caught between readiness and reality. FIs have made progress toward faster payments enablement, but the next stage will require moving beyond receive-only deployment toward send-side confidence, intelligent orchestration and scalable modernization. This Tracker examines why sending remains the bottleneck, where the business case is strongest and what institutions need to scale instant payments from technical capability to everyday utility.

Access Versus Activation

Most banks can receive, but far fewer are sending instant payments.

Volante’s Faster Payments Barometer findings clearly illustrate this caution. Although two-thirds (66%) of large institutions are preparing to receive instant payments, just 34% intend to launch with both send and receive capabilities. The disparity is even greater among small to mid-sized FIs, with 78% planning to begin with receive-only capabilities versus 22% intending to launch with both send and receive functionality. Overall, only 24% of institutions plan to enable send capabilities initially.

One reason for this greater disparity is that smaller institutions face additional structural considerations. Unlike larger banks with broader liquidity resources, they may be more cautious about enabling send capabilities because of concerns that real-time outbound payments could accelerate deposit outflows and increase liquidity-management demands. As a result, many choose to establish receive capabilities first while building the controls, funding strategies and operational confidence needed to support send-side use cases at scale.

This reflects a widespread industry pattern: Institutions are gaining access to real-time rails faster than they are building the confidence, controls and workflows required to use them fully.

There is a notable gap between real-time capability and real-world usage.

The gap is especially important for business payments. Volante found that business end users increasingly prioritize instant capabilities for point-of-sale (51%), eCommerce (54%), invoicing and supplier payments, yet FIs often focus first on consumer-oriented use cases such as peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, bill pay and account transfers. This misalignment risks slowing businesses’ adoption of instant payments because access alone does not address the business problems these capabilities are meant to solve.

For banks, the strategic question is no longer whether they can connect to real-time rails. It is whether they can activate those rails in ways that meet customer demand, support business use cases and generate measurable value.

Why Sending Is the Bottleneck

Fraud concerns and payment irrevocability still pose obstacles.

Because instant payments compress the decision window, leaving little room for manual review or post-transaction correction, fraud concerns remain one of the most significant barriers. RedCompass Labs found that more than 85% of banks expect fraud to increase as instant payments adoption expands. These concerns make pre-validation, authentication and risk scoring essential at the point of initiation.

Decisioning across different rails remains complex.

Another challenge is routing. As payment expectations evolve, banks are increasingly being forced to distinguish between transactions that are genuinely time-critical and those better suited to lower-cost or deferred rails. Institutions must continually decide whether a payment should move through RTP, FedNow, automated clearing house (ACH), same-day ACH or wire, depending on urgency, cost, availability, value, customer preference and risk. Without intelligent routing and orchestration—supported by solutions such as Volante’s embedded preprocessing and real-time decisioning—banks risk turning faster payments into another silo rather than a more efficient payment capability.

The send-side bottleneck is therefore not simply a risk issue. It is an infrastructure issue. Banks need systems that support decisioning before the payment moves—not after.

The Business Case for Sending Instant Payments

Activation unlocks high-value business use cases.

That demand is already evident across the market. Volante’s research found that 80% of respondents, consisting primarily of FIs, facilitators, business end users and networks, now view faster payments as a “must-have” capability rather than an emerging service. Businesses increasingly want faster access to funds, better visibility into payment status and more control over timing. As adoption matures, institutions could see instant payments enabling a second wave of business use cases that extend well beyond traditional payment flows.

By enabling intelligent, real-time decisioning, banks can deliver greater value to corporate clients and position instant payments as a strategic capability rather than a basic service.

Real-time liquidity management is becoming a competitive advantage.

For corporate clients, the value of instant payments is not speed alone. It is certainty. Knowing when funds will arrive, being able to pay closer to due dates and reducing reliance on intermediaries can improve working capital and strengthen customer relationships.

Real-time payments can also improve liquidity visibility by allowing businesses to move funds closer to the moment they are needed. This reduces idle balances, supports more precise cash-management strategies and enables organizations to optimize the use of working capital across accounts and payment flows.

This is where send-side activation becomes commercially important. Banks that can help businesses move money instantly, securely and intelligently can differentiate themselves beyond basic account services. Instant payments become not just a rail but a business tool for improving liquidity, reducing friction and strengthening client relationships.

What Is Missing Today

Standardized user experiences and workflows are lacking.

Intelligent routing and orchestration across rails are urgently needed.

The challenge becomes even clearer at the workflow level. Corporate clients under pressure to optimize value may be required to send payroll, supplier payments and emergency disbursements under different rails, validation protocols and fraud controls. Institutions must connect payment initiation, validation, routing, fraud screening, liquidity management and customer communication into a single, cohesive workflow. Without that coordination, instant payments can create operational complexity rather than reduce it.

Confidence and control at the point of payment initiation are especially important.

Businesses need assurance that a payment will reach the right recipient through the right rail at the right time, regardless of the use case. Banks need the controls to manage risk before funds leave the account. That requires more than connectivity. It requires intelligence embedded into the payment flow.

What It Takes to Scale

Orchestration across RTP^®, FedNow^®, ACH and wires is vital.

Embedded intelligence and ISO 20022-native infrastructure support richer data and automation.

Orchestration requires infrastructure capable of real-time validation, fraud controls, routing and the integration of ISO 20022-native data. For example, Volante’s research found that 84% of FIs consider multi-factor authentication (MFA) an essential component of real-time payments infrastructure. Richer messaging can also improve automation and reconciliation, but only if systems are built to capture and use that data effectively.

A phased modernization strategy is often critical.

Many institutions cannot replace existing infrastructure all at once. Instead, they need architectures that work alongside current systems while enabling new capabilities over time. Cloud-based services, hybrid models and modular implementation can help banks add instant payment capabilities without disrupting core operations.

Volante, for example, helps institutions move beyond basic enablement by supporting orchestration across payment rails, embedding validation and fraud controls, enabling intelligent routing and providing a phased path to modernization. Its platform is designed to help institutions manage liquidity more holistically across RTP, FedNow, ACH and wire networks rather than treating each rail as a separate operational silo. Intelligent routing and dynamic rail substitution can help institutions evaluate payment urgency, availability, reachability and liquidity conditions in real time, supporting continuous payment execution even when preferred rails are unavailable or operating outside standard processing windows.

The platform also provides configurable controls, liquidity guardrails and operational monitoring capabilities that can help institutions scale send-side activation with greater confidence. Combined with high-availability infrastructure and AI-powered monitoring and message-enrichment capabilities, these tools are intended to help institutions move from reactive payment operations toward more intelligent, resilient and automated real-time payment environments.

The goal is not simply to connect banks to faster payment networks but to help them deliver scalable, value-added payment experiences built around control and operational efficiency.

From Connectivity to Confidence in Instant Payments

Instant payments are no longer an access problem. They are an activation challenge.

As RTP and FedNow reach more institutions, the competitive advantage will shift to banks that can send confidently, route intelligently and support real business use cases at scale. Institutions that remain receive-only risk treating instant payments as a compliance or connectivity milestone rather than a growth opportunity.

PYMNTS Intelligence offers the following actionable roadmap for financial institutions looking to move from access to activation of real-time rails:

• Build send-side confidence. Implement real-time validation, fraud controls and liquidity management capabilities that allow institutions to send payments securely and reliably.
• Align instant payment capabilities with business demand. Prioritize use cases such as eCommerce and supplier payments that businesses increasingly expect to move in real time.
• Embed fraud and validation controls at initiation. Shift decisioning to earlier in the payment flow to verify recipients, assess risk and reduce errors before funds move.
• Orchestrate across rails. Enable intelligent routing across RTP, FedNow, ACH and wires based on urgency, cost, availability and customer needs.
• Modernize through phased infrastructure strategies. Adopt cloud-based, hybrid and modular approaches that support instant payments without requiring wholesale system replacement.

Partnerships with AI-powered payments platforms that provide orchestration, validation, fraud controls and multi-rail support can help institutions accelerate activation while reducing the operational burden of modernization. The banks that succeed will not be those that simply connect to instant payment rails. They will be those that turn those rails into usable, trusted and scalable payment experiences.

The industry has spent the last few years solving for connectivity, but for real-time payments, the send-side gap, particularly among smaller banks, still remains. Real-time payments, along with the autonomous flows emerging on top of them, can only scale when institutions can operationalize them across real customer use cases, with validation, fraud controls and liquidity management in place before a single dollar leaves the account. Without that foundation, faster payment rails risk becoming isolated capabilities instead of strategic assets.”