BNY Mellon’s automated smart routing solution decides which payments rail to send transactions through behind the scenes, without burdening clients with the decision. 

“We don’t want our clients to know — or care — about [how money is sent], we want them to think about real-time payments, period,” Carl Slabicki, managing director and co-head of global payments at BNY Mellon Treasury Services, told Bank Automation News. “What we’ve essentially built for all of our clients — our bank clients as well as our corporate clients — is a router.” 

This router can automatically send payments through Same-Day ACH, the Federal Reserve’s FedNow, The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments (RTP) network, Zelle disbursements or push to a debit card depending on bank eligibility for these rails, he said. 

As of now, about 69% of accounts are on RTP or FedNow, which means 31% of accounts in the U.S. are not eligible for those types of payments, Slabicki said. And that’s where ACH would be used by default. 

To keep up with payments rails and consumer demand, BNY Mellon is adding capabilities, Slabicki said. “We’re adding the ability to pay in wallets, like PayPal and Venmo.”  

Iterating the solution

$30.9 billion BNY is continually adding different payment types to the routing system, keeping in mind that new rails come to market and client demand changes, Slabicki said. 

BNY works in two-week sprints on the technology to ensure that the capabilities are up to date with client needs, he said.  

The question was: “How do we automate, into a single solution, the ability to tie together seven, eight different payment types, knowing they’re going to continue to change?” Slabicki said. 

The answer is based on client feedback in order to understand customer pain points, design needs or process flow requirements, he said. 

“Those discussions and that feedback drives where we spend our focus and time to try to optimize the solutions,” he said.