Mastercard and The Clearing House deepen their partnership to zero in on new instant payments applications 

Mastercard recently expanded collaboration with The Clearing House (TCH), with the shared goal of propelling the adoption of instant payments. This extended partnership will focus on integrating additional instant payment use cases across a range of payment flows for consumers, businesses, and governments.

“Beyond extending our partnership with Mastercard, we intend to partner on innovating for the banks that use the network by looking for additional use cases that they’ve expressed interest in and that would help drive volume across RTP,” said Lee Alexander, Executive VP and CIO at The Clearing House.

Mastercard’s collaboration with TCH dates back to 2017 when TCH introduced the RTP network, with Mastercard as the exclusive software provider for the network.

Currently, the RTP network includes 487 banks and credit unions, offering real-time payment services to their customers. However, the landscape has become more competitive with the introduction of FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s instant payments system that launched last year in July.

FedNow and RTP are eyeing new use cases to compete for bank partnerships, however, achieving widespread adoption remains a shared hurdle for both instant payment rails. FedNow attracted 331 participants, while RTP had 460 participants as of December 2023.

I interviewed Chiro Aikat, Executive VP of U.S. Market Development at Mastercard, to discuss the extended partnership’s new areas of focus, strategies the RTP network is employing to appeal to a broader range of participants, and the role of instant payments in the extended payments ecosystem.