Truist’s newest bill-pay solution taps The Clearing House’s (TCH) Real-Time Payments network’s Request for Payment (RfP) tool.  

“The economy is changing to a more real-time, a more instantaneous” one, Chris Ward, head of enterprise payments at the $536 billion bank, told Bank Automation News.  

Consumers want simplicity, speed and safety when tracking their transactions, he said. 

Alias-based payments

The alias-based bill payment solution allows Truist clients to access TCH’s RfP tool with just a mobile number or email address, Ward said. Bank customers don’t walk around with their account number memorized, but they do know their phone number or email. 

For example, if a consumer is signing up for a streaming service or paying a bill, “you’re going to know your mobile number or your email address and if that’s all you need to be able to get your bills presented, voila. It really makes life so much easier.” 

The bill pay solution can be used by anyone, Ward said, for payments like:

• A mortgage; 

• A gas bill; 

• An electric bill; 

• Rent. 

“Any bill that you’re getting is a practical use case,” Ward said. 

The RfP tool

TCH’s RfP tool, launched in July 2023, allows billers and sellers to send requests to buyers to pay invoices or bills in real time through their banking applications, Jim Colassano, senior vice president of product development at TCH, previously told BAN.  

RfP creates straight-through processing for bill payment activities for immediate settlement and reconciliation, Keith Riddle,  general manager at payments company Payfinia, told BAN. Including “all the data associated with that invoice or bill.” 

“It’s a lower cost than other payment streams, and they get the reconciliation data happening immediately, so everything is tied off, giving the consumer full transparency that payment is posted versus sort of provisional posting messages,” Riddle said.  

Today, there are about 100 banks and credit unions sending RfPs on the RTP network as adoption grows, a TCH spokesperson told BAN.  

KeyBank, for one, aims to use RTP’s RfP receive and send capabilities in the coming years, Brandon Nowac, executive vice president of payments at KeyBank Commercial Bank, told BAN. 

Truist completed the pilot of the new solution in late April. The next step is to roll out the solution to clients, which is expected to take place by the end of this year or early 2026, Ward said.