The thing about instant gratification is that the more people get, the more they want.

And today’s consumers can get it with virtually anything – from doorstep food delivery to streaming of videos including not only this year’s Oscar contenders but also TV ratings gold of the 1950s.

With that kind of easy access – coupled with the requirement of upfront payment for it all – it should be no surprise that consumers have begun asking, “Why do I have instant access to everything except my money?’” said Justin Jackson, Senior Vice President and Head of Enterprise Payments at Fiserv.

Enter real-time payments.

Services that let bank accountholders access funds right away are, increasingly, table stakes for financial institutions seeking to compete in a payments landscape that would have been unrecognizable in the late 1990s, when paper checks were still widely used and many people carried ATM cards that enabled only cash deposits and withdrawals.

Debit cards were still in their infancy.

As the 21st century dawned, however, technological advances turbocharged the rate of change. Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007 laid the groundwork for mobile payments, and the founding of person-to-person payment service Venmo followed two years later.

In 2017, The Clearing House – a payments company owned by the largest commercial banks – introduced the RTP® network to bring instant payments to the U.S. Today, that network reaches roughly 70% of demand deposit accounts.

Then, in mid-2023, the Federal Reserve introduced a new payment network, the FedNow® Service, built to serve financial institutions and their customers regardless of size. Much like the RTP network, it’s strictly a payment network, or rail, through which transactions travel, and its growth has been rapid.

FedNow has shown impressive growth in 2025 Q2 with 2,130,889 total settled payment transactions, which is 62.7% growth over the previous quarter. FedNow also processed $245 Billion in settled payments in Q2 2025, 405% over the previous quarter.¹

The transformation is still far from complete: In the next three years, instant payments will make up 22% of global payment transaction volume, compared with just 16% in 2023, Capgemini predicts in its World Payments Report 2025.

Not having real-time payments is a deal-breaker

Almost half of U.S. companies have started initiating instant payments, and their numbers are growing faster than the number of financial institutions offering the service – indicating that financial institutions are taking advantage of the gap, according to a February 2024 report from Datos Insights.

For banks that don’t offer real-time payments, the risk of losing customers is mounting: Some 42% of businesses have changed or will change financial services providers to gain access, according to the Datos report.

Consumers are increasingly likely to do the same. Roughly 75% say instant access to money from payments is important, and younger consumers prioritize it most, according to a November 2021 report from Javelin Strategy & Research. Some 93% of millennials want real- time payments, and 90% of Gen Zers – some of whom aren’t yet in high school – do, too.

Real-time payment, of course, isn’t a single product but a catchall term that only seems self-explanatory outside the arcane world of finance, where money can change hands via check, credit and debit card, account-to-account transfer, international wire transfer and more.

Each transaction may operate on different systems, and bank customers seeking real-time payment capability might be referring to any of them.

The Clearing House Real-Time Payments Network processed $481 billion in payments in Q2 2025, a 195% leap from the previous quarter.²

Joining that growing market supports five business imperatives for banks and credit unions:

• Increasing customer acquisition: Real-time payments sharpen a financial institution’s competitive edge, boost revenue and increase wallet share.
• Improving operational efficiency: Settlement 24 hours a day, seven days a week provides more control over cash flow and enables better liquidity management.
• Reducing fraud risk: Because final settlement for payments is immediate, there’s less room for swindling that can occur with other types of transactions.
• Improving customer retention: Offering real-time services can help avoid losing customers to rivals with more robust payment capabilities.
• Generating institutional growth: Real-time payments drive up demand deposits.

Golden 1, the second largest credit union in the state of California, with more than $20 billion in assets, saw real-time payments more than triple in the first three months of enabling them through Fiserv.

End-of-shift payments for workers

“The emphasis now is on immediacy,” said Paul Sidhu, Vice President of Payment Servicing Operations at Golden 1. “Working with Fiserv, which we consider a strategic partner, we’re able to provide the seamless end- to-end experience that our members want.”

Real-time payments are especially important in the California market, where Golden 1, formed in 1933, has more than 1.1 million members.

“We have a large population of tech, gig economy and film industry workers who tend to benefit from real-time payments, especially those who want to get paid at the end of their shifts, such as drivers for ride- hailing apps who need to buy gas for the next day’s work,” Sidhu said. “Our ability to proactively deliver the products and services our members need reflects the collective momentum we’re building to support even more Californians in the years ahead.”

A real-time payment product that fits

Through Fiserv, banks and credit unions have a variety of options for connecting to real-time payment networks. The NOW® package, for example, includes the NOW Network, which provides low-cost instant transactions, and NOW Gateway, which connects financial institutions to real-time payment networks.

Developed to emphasize speed-to-market and simplicity, NOW leverages a sponsor-bank relationship for network access.

A separate service, Payments Exchange, offers financial institutions direct access to the FedNow Service and the RTP network as well as payment services including Fedwire and SWIFT messaging for international money transfers.

“Regardless of the size of a bank or credit union and the business that it specializes in, we have a product that fits them,” Jackson said. “Instant payment processing is built into our platforms from the get-go. The ability to take even the smallest financial institutions and make them network participants that have the same capability set as the Top Four bank down the street is a critical value proposition.”

 

¹https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/fednow/quarterly-volume-value-stats

²https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/Articles/2025/07/RTP-Q2-Value-Surge