The global pandemic has sparked an increased need for immediate transactions and enhanced digital payment solutions across industries. Contextual commerce is on the rise – allowing customers, workers, merchants and suppliers to implement a quicker way to do business that fits into their 24/7/365 lifestyle.
In a 2020 report, nearly 59 million Americans have freelanced in the past year, which is equivalent to 36 percent of the United States workforce. By 2028, the number of freelancers in the U.S. is expected to exceed 90.1 million.1 According to a 2019 report, two-thirds of workers under the age of 35 expect immediate access to wages earned. Regardless of job type, all workers are expecting to be paid on demand all hours of the day, every day, including weekends and holidays, and with RTP, that’s now possible.
Advancements in the speed of e-commerce has consumers and merchants expecting goods and services on demand. Payment immediacy must extend from these consumers to acceptance, settlement and immediate funds availability for merchants as well.
Big data and analytics are helping organizations to grow their business, lower costs and improve the customer’s experience. RTP with immediate acknowledgements, real-time request for payment bills and invoicing, remittance messaging, request for information and request for return of funds messages all provide a source of immediate data to support stronger customer relationships and to facilitate fraud detection and protection.
Here are four ways Real-Time Payments (RTP) will disrupt the future of payments and how businesses should get prepared.
1. Endless possibilities for new payments experiences
The 24/7/365 payments environment means you can send and receive payments any time of day and any day of the week. RTP are transforming the payment landscape for use cases served inefficiently with existing payment infrastructures, but more importantly providing the infrastructure for brand new uses cases and business models that could not have been imagined without RTP.
Consider how disruptive innovation enables new business models. For example, peer-to-peer ride-sharing would have been impossible without digital maps that use geolocation technology to pinpoint your exact place at any given moment. However, payments would remain a missing link. Customers can make a no-click payment by credit card from their digital wallets, but payment settlement takes days at the interbank level as well as availability to the end beneficiary.
RTP removes the gap and the friction points from this settlement process. Companies can receive remuneration with immediate availability within seconds, and more importantly, it allows the companies to pay their employees faster. Practical improvements to today’s business models, even those already considered disruptive, are enormous. In addition, new business applications are practically endless.
2. Real-time Payments satisfy the need for immediacy
RTP extend the benefit of instantaneous transaction of services across payer and payee. Businesses delivering goods on demand get payment on demand. Merchants get paid within seconds for instantly fulfilling customer needs. Urgent situations requiring payouts meet customer expectations. The solution provides clarity and finality, and instantly addresses the needs of all involved.
3. Envisioning, championing, and creating change
Imagine the possibilities for this new payment rail to enable new ways of doing things. How could it change the experience for your customers, suppliers, employees and business partners? The bank is harnessing converging technologies—including APIs, open banking (PSD2), big data, machine learning, smart devices and connected objects—and leveraging their intersection with real-time payments. This is integral to partnering with our clients as they shape their strategies for sustained success amid rapid change. In advancing our systems, we are enabling our clients to better serve their customers by creating new, more efficient payment capabilities based on real-time payments. J.P. Morgan is collaborating closely with clients to contextualize RTP into their business needs and to enable leaps in thinking to create new business models.
This emerging rail for faster payments will be part of the bank’s capability to intelligently route payments through channel optimization.
As the paradigm shifts and the world moves towards a more digital society, solutions will move from batch processes to real-time offerings to create this future state. Clients benefit from the speed of payment, transparency for the both payer and the beneficiary and security as RTP are irrevocable.
Delivering real-time solutions with APIs
Early adopters of digital solutions have shared their success stories, like a leading technology and digital payments platform that embraced immediate access to funds. Unilever, a British-Dutch multinational, employed the Insight API plugin to build a real-time treasury – gaining the company to 130 accounts in 10 days.
J.P. Morgan is also partnering with companies and fintechs to advance the next generation of payment and banking innovation. We invite our clients to engage with us to solve challenges, initiate change, and explore the benefits of the RTP frontier.
4. Globalizing Real-time Payments
The banking industry is on a path to globalizing RTP. J.P. Morgan is live in over 45 markets today and is delivering solutions to clients through a consistent, unified experience, with a goal of driving interoperability between faster payments solutions in the near future.
A key driver of ubiquity is wide scale adoption by banks. In the U.S., The Clearing House (TCH) is working to bring the nation’s banks into the RTP network, and the same effort is underway in Europe’s Single European Payment Area (SEPA) with SEPA Instant. Eventually RTP will evolve into a global payment network that includes not only domestic but cross-border payments. FX will seamlessly integrate into payments experience.
Real-time payments readiness plan
Consider the following steps to gain the broad benefits of RTP:
- Look at your strategic roadmap and consider how RTP can help you better service and delight your customers.
- Look at use cases within your organization for RTP to improve various processes and become more efficient (e.g., elimination of paper checks).
- Employee processes (e.g., payroll, T&E reimbursements)
- Consumer processes (e.g., wallet, cash apps, collections)
- Business processes (e.g., supplier and vendor payments)
- Take advantage of the cash management benefits of real-time processing, such as increasing interest earnings, enhanced inventory management and faster/paperless collections.
- Simplify and ease payables and receivables reconciliation by using the ISO20022 messaging and request for payment features.
Connect with your J.P. Morgan representative to find the right solution for your business.
References
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of J.P. Morgan, its affiliates, or its employees. The information set forth herein has been obtained or derived from sources believed to be reliable. Neither the author nor J.P. Morgan makes any representations or warranties as to the information’s accuracy or completeness. The information contained herein has been provided solely for informational purposes and does not constitute an offer, solicitation, advice or recommendation, to make any investment decisions or purchase any financial instruments, and may not be construed as such.
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