RTP (The Clearing House)
The big US banks' instant payment system, launched in 2017 as the first new American payment rail in decades.
The Clearing House, owned by a couple of dozen of the country's largest banks, opened the RTP network in November 2017. Payments arrive in seconds around the clock, are final immediately and settle in a jointly held, prefunded account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Messages were ISO 20022 from the start, and the network supports Request for Payment, a payment request the recipient approves in their banking app. As with most instant schemes, money can only be pushed, never pulled.
The transaction limit started at $100,000 and rose to $1 million in 2022. The problem was reach: thousands of small banks and credit unions never joined, which was the main reason the Fed built FedNow. The US now has two competing instant payment systems, and a population that still writes cheques.