Real-time payments have become not just an expectation, but the norm when it comes to picking a financial institution—both for individual consumers, and business clients.

Is the solution to smoother integration of these services—which often cost FIs a large amount of money and effort—an incubator service?

Financial services provider FIS, in tandem with payments company the Clearing House, are offering up an incubator service for FIs, which will allow participating financial institutions to test and deploy real-time payments solutions, without relying on their own technology.

FIS assumes the “operational aspects” of the process, according to Doug Gross, executive director of corporate banking solutions for FIS.

Gross told Bank Innovation:

The Incubator is targeted at financial institutions to become enabled for the Clearing House RTP network. Initial target financial institutions are TCH member banks that already have direct relationships, to enable faster time to market. Initially, the solution will support receipt and processing/posting of a payment from the Clearing House RTP network, including the provision of standard APIs the FI can use to integrate with its core deposit platform.

The incubator is meant to be used for a limited time (say 18-24 months) to then enable the financial institutions to evaluate their real-time payments strategy to either bring the solution in-house (in their bank) or to convert to an FIS ASP environment.

The members of the Clearing House include some of the largest global banks, such as Banco Santander, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and others. The target timeline for project implementation is four months, according to Gross, which includes the work with standard APIs, operational testing, and training, among other steps.

The incubator service can be applied towards either B2B or consumer services, though the expectation is that the business “will be driven by fee income from commercial customers as new payment capabilities are supported and in the ability to attract commercial and business customers based on being an early mover in the faster payments market,” according to Gross.

An incubator service specifically designed to cut operation and testing costs to FIs is a new approach to quite an old problem: scuffling to be the first to provide better, faster,  actually real-time payment services.

The incubator is set to pilot later this year, with FIS and the Clearing House working with the banks who want to be “first to market,” according to Gross.