Five reasons why credit unions need to be in real-time payments
Whether you intend to jump into RTP or start slowly, be sure to plan for the future of payments at your credit union.
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Credit unions already offer their members many different options for payments: debit cards, credit cards, online bill-pay (which typically results in an automated clearing house transaction), old-fashioned checks and wire transfer, along with digital issuance to push credit union-branded credit or debit cards into mobile wallets. But there is currently a revolution underway in payments, and it’s called real-time payments.
RTP represents a new payments “rail,” meaning a completely different method of access. Moving money from the sender’s account to the recipient’s account—otherwise known as the settlement of a real-time payment transaction—happens at the same time as the payment authorization. Real-time payments cannot be stopped or reversed once they are approved.
This new payment access has many upsides:
- Funds are available immediately in the recipient’s account
- There is lower potential for fraud since there are only “push” payments (credits) and no “pull” payments (debits), and each send request is validated prior to payment authorization
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