The Clearing House continues to scale its operations with its Real Time Payments network clearing $500 billion at the end of November.  

Scaling and monitoring growth “is critical when you’re standing up a brand-new network,” Jim Colassano, senior vice president of product development, told Bank Automation News. 

The instant payments rail, launched seven years ago, reaches 70% of the market, including 800 banks, he said. In terms of growth, “we are starting to see the beginning of the hockey stick, if you will.” 

Scaling operations

The Clearing House is also scaling other solutions, including its Request for Payments (RFP) tool, Colassano said. RFP is still in “growth mode” with a scaled launch strategy, but the tool is expected to be “a game changer in the latter part of 2025, entering 2026” as merchants and billers add efficiency around the collection of money to their operations.

While innovation around payments is falling off industrywide, there has not been much “advancement in collecting money,” he said.

The Clearing House’s RFP solution is filling that gap by automating money collection, he said. Through RFP, billers and sellers can send requests to buyers to pay invoices or bills in real time through their banking applications. 

This capability enables 24-hour processing for bill collection, Colassano said.

RFP launched in July 2023 and is in its second phase of scaling now, Colassano said, adding that The Clearing House had very recently completed its “millionth RFP transaction.”

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