A second major bank will join PNC Bank and add fees to cover expenses related to realtime payments.
The advent of realtime payments is expected to significantly reduce the money banks make from delayed payments. This expected decline in revenue is one of the reasons why banks have been slow to adopt realtime offerings, despite the urgings of the Federal Reserve, Vinay Prabhakar, head of markets strategy & payments at Finastra, told Bank Innovation.
But now a second major bank has found a solution: fees. Bank Innovation learned about the second bank in an off-the-record meeting today.
The bank will join PNC Bank in maintaining its revenue through fees. PNC — one of the first banks in the country to offer realtime payments — has a 2% fee on instant transfer. This model mirrors others in retail. Rideshare company Uber charges a $5 flat fee so its drivers can get paid the same day. For this, Uber teamed up with Green Dot’s GoBank.
The Clearing House first introduced the push for realtime payments in 2015. TCH expects all banks to be realtime ready by 2020.
Delayed payments allow banks to make money on payday loans, overdraft fees, and other types of late fees. But faster payments will eliminate the ability of banks to collect much of those fees, because consumers replenish their accounts on the same day, for example.
“A lot of money is sucked out of the economy by our current payments system,” one source told Bank Innovation. “About 50% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and not having immediate access to their money is costing the economy $3 billion annually, in a conservative estimation.”
Banks are looking at ways to monetize realtime payments by using APIs and data associated with realtime money movement to offer customers personalized products and services. But these innovations are still in the early stages, and “customers are getting impatient. There’s a convergence of expectations from the customer in their experiences outside their banking life and what they expect to experience with their banks.”
The quick fix for delivering realtime payments for the customer while establishing a revenue stream for the bank is a fees structure, and “customers are willing to pay a small transfer fee than a $135 overdraft fee,” another source said.
Square already charges a flat fee for instant access to money through its Square Cash app, and U.S. Bank has experimented with fees for faster delivery of funds as well.
In December 2017, retail giant Walmart, one of the nation’s largest employers, partnered with the fintech Even to offer their employees the ability to take advances on paychecks. So instead of waiting for their biweekly paychecks, Walmart employees — 1.4 million and counting — can get paid for time already worked using the Even app.
Learn more about the future of payments at Bank Innovation Ignite 2019. The event will take place March 11-12 at Seattle’s Hyatt Olive 8 Hotel. Register here.






