The Clearing House is planning to extend its real-time payments system, called the RTP network, across international borders by the first half of next year.
The payments company, which is owned by major U.S. and foreign banks, expects to start the new international payments capability as a pilot program, with BNY as one of the first financial institutions signed up to participate.
TCH said earlier this year that it was mulling the possibility, but it wasn’t clear when the move would happen. Now it’s aiming for a 2027 start that would precede a similar move by the federal government. The Federal Reserve this year proposed stretching its real-time payments system, FedNow, outside the U.S. as well, but there’s no start date for the extension.
“BNY is looking to be in the early group of banks to support this in the first half of 2027,” Carl Slabicki, BNY’s head of commercial, global payments and trade, said in a Tuesday interview.
The Clearing House’s international foray has set off a bit of a race with FedNow to be the first U.S. real-time payments system to offer cross-border, real-time payments.
“RTP will be the first US instant payments network to have cross-border payments capability,” TCH spokesperson Greg MacSweeney contended.
Slabicki explained how such international real-time payments are already common in other countries, including Australia, the U.K. and India, and pointed to significant demand from around the world for that capability to reach into the U.S.
To this point, the RTP network, which launched in 2017, and FedNow, which began in 2023, have only made such speedy, around-the-clock payment options available within the U.S. In financial circles, professionals call the international extension a “one-leg-out” capability, meaning one part of the transaction is happening in the U.S., with another part touching a foreign country.
The Clearing House moved to update rules for RTP earlier this year to allow the one-leg-out instant payments, with RTP serving as the U.S. leg of inbound and outbound payments, with the rule changes taking effect next month, MacSweeney said by email.
The updated RTP system will “help address the multi-legged payments challenge of cross border payments,” MacSweeney said. “Early adopter banks plan to begin piloting the capability early next year.”
Slabicki declined to name the other TCH banks that plan to participate in the RTP pilot next year, and MacSweeney didn’t immediately comment on other participants. Other TCH bank owners include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Deutsche Bank and Santander.
“There's a lot of demand from overseas to be able to pay to and from U.S. beneficiaries on a 24/7 basis,” Slabicki said. “Right now, we can't do that, without enabling the so-called one leg out capability on both RTP and FedNow. So you know they're likely to do that at different times, which is fine.”
Slabicki expects RTP as well as FedNow will both eventually have international availability because it makes sense for the U.S. to satisfy the client demand.
It’s “really just going to open up a lot of benefit to both the U.S. beneficiaries that own those accounts, as well as their foreign counterparties,” he said.
