Real-Time Payments
Real-Time Payments (RTP) is an emerging payment rail that combines immediate funds availability, settlement finality, instant confirmation, and integrated information flows, all within seconds. This allows your payments to be initiated and settled instantaneously.
Benefits
Experience the benefits of Real-Time Payments across the payment lifecycle.
Onboarding
New market enablement through our Global API & an enhanced API based experience, with 24/7 availability in most markets.
Payment processing
Increased disbursement success rate & support high volume transactions.
Settlement
Instant payment finality and visibility with real-time view of cash positions and confirmations.
Business operations
Automatic reconciliations & improved liquidity management.
Real-Time Payments are immediate, irrevocable, contextual, and secure. Additional benefits include:
- No cutoff times: Instant payments are available 24/7*.
- Speed and transparency: Funds are available to the payee within seconds and ready for immediate use.
- Finality: Transactions are irrevocable.
- Messaging: Extensible messaging supports more sophisticated applications, such as confirmation notifications/callbacks..
When to use Real-Time Payments
Wallet withdrawals
Give users immediate access to funds by initiating transfers from digital wallets to bank accounts.
Instant payroll
Empower employees with on-demand payouts for their earned wages.
Merchant payouts
Give merchants the flexibility to access their funds on demand.
Vendor payments
Pay vendors for services and goods provided and reduce costly follow-ups.
Urgent payments and payroll
Make urgent payments to employees with speed and finality.
Bill payments
Confirm received payments in real-time, reducing support calls.
How Real-Time Payments works
Real-Time Payments are made between two bank accounts or aliases (e.g., email ID, mobile number) and are initiated and settled within seconds. Real-Time Payments can occur at any time of day, any day of the year, including weekends and holidays.
Whether it’s a business making a cross-border payment, a worker sending remittances within their own country, or e-commerce consumers making instant transactions, the demand for Real-Time Payments capabilities is growing.
The Global Payments API supports three key Real-Time Payments actions:
- Initiate a payment: Submit a payment request by submitting the minimum required payload for your region to the Global Payments API
/paymentsendpoint. - Determine success of the payment: Enable callbacks for automatic status updates, or manually check the status of your payment request.
- Retrieve payment information: Use the contents of a successful payment response to retrieve the payment information from your request.
Availability
Real-Time Payments is available in the following regions and markets:
| Regions | Market/Scheme |
|---|---|
| North America (NA) | United States
|
| Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) |
|
| Asia-Pacific (APAC) |
|
| Latin America (LATAM) |
|
Next steps
- Learn how to initiate a Real-Time Payments request.
- Understand the required payment parameters for your region.