Higher transaction limits could spur more B2B payment activity on The Clearing House’s real-time payments network.

The Clearing House’s RTP network’s transaction limit was raised to $10 million on Feb. 9, after growing from $25,000 to $100,000 to $1 million during the past eight years, Carl Slabicki, executive platform owner, treasury services, at the $30 billion BNY, told Bank Automation News.

BNY, which has been on the RTP network since 2017, was the first to use the transaction limit when stock transfer company Computershare transferred $10 million to another financial institution Feb. 10, Slabicki said.

New use cases

The $10 million payment limit could lead to a rise in merchant transactions, he said, noting that B2C, account-to-account (A2A), settlement payments and early access to payroll historically constituted the majority of RTP transactions.

“Now that RTP has moved to $10 million per transaction, I think there’s two new use cases that are now going to start to take advantage of that,” Slabicki said, citing:

• Business-to-business payments, such as vendor and supplier payments; and
• Intercompany liquidity and cash management.

“If you look at how a lot of the business-to-consumer volume has grown over time, it starts off with a couple of clients that learn what the best practices, which are then shared across different industry segments,” Slabicki said. He expects the growth of B2B payments to be similar.

“I think the word’s going to get out that [the RTP network] is accessible for these types of use cases,” he said.

User demand

Jim Colassano, senior vice president, RTP business product management for The Clearing House, said the limit increase was a direct response to user demand.

“We listened to the RTP community, where many were asking for a higher transaction limit,” he said.

There’s already been an increase in merchant activity on the RTP network in the past year, with more businesses using it to receive sales receipts and payments at the end of the day rather than waiting two to three business days for the proceeds to be deposited into their accounts, Colassano told BAN.

“We are also seeing title insurance and real estate payments, B2B and supply chain payments, and insurance disbursements increase during the past year,” he said.

In addition to accepting payments, the RTP network can be used for:

• Invoicing;
• Monthly billing; and
• Payment requests.

Business clients are demanding more instant payment capabilities from their banks as they move away from traditional paper or email payments toward streamlined, digital transactions, Debbie Smart, senior product marketer at banking solutions provider Q2, told BAN.

Eighty percent of businesses identify instant payments as a “must have,” U.S. Faster Payments Council Executive Director Reed Luhtanen said in a statement, referencing its “2025 Faster Payments Barometer” report, published today, which surveyed more than 400 organizations, including financial institutions.

According to the report:

• 54% of businesses are most interested in using instant payment networks for e-commerce;
• 51% of businesses are most interested in point-of-sale transactions;
• 41% are most interested in invoicing and supplier payments;
• Only 41% of large FIs and 28% of business believe the U.S. is making sufficient progress toward faster payments adoption;
• 60% of business end users are affected by lack of interoperability of faster payment networks; and
• 58% of FIs that have implemented instant payments have opted for a multi-network strategy, implementing both RTP and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow network.

TCH had 857 financial institutions on its RTP network as of Jan. 30, compared with more than 1,200 on the FedNow network. With 390 new FIs onboarded in 2024, the RTP network is connected to 72% of checking and savings accounts in the U.S., with most concentrated in the 50 largest FIs, a THC spokesperson told BAN.

“We continue to expect to see RTP grow in 2025 as more financial institutions enable the capability,” Colassano said.

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