RTP (The Clearing House)

Also called Real-Time Payments, RTP Network, The Clearing House, TCH

The bank-owned instant payment network, live since 2017. Irrevocable, 24/7/365, up to $10 million per transaction.

What it is

RTP is the real-time payments network operated by The Clearing House, a payments company owned by a group of large US commercial banks. It launched in 2017 and was the first new US payment rail in decades. Payments settle instantly, run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and are irrevocable once sent — there is no chargeback and no return. The current scale is substantial and verifiable from The Clearing House directly: over 1,322 participants as of July 2026, 142 million transactions totaling $576 billion in Q2 2026 alone, a daily average value of $6.7 billion as of July 2026, and cumulative volume since 2017 of 1.7 billion transactions clearing and settling over $3.2 trillion. The per-transaction limit is $10 million. The Clearing House reports 100% uptime with zero scheduled downtime. RTP carries rich ISO 20022 message data, which matters more to businesses than the speed does: remittance information travels with the payment, so a $40,000 wire-equivalent arrives with invoice numbers attached and reconciles automatically instead of requiring an email and a phone call. The Clearing House also operates ACH, CHIPS and Image Exchange, and its payments authority serves more than 4,000 member banks, credit unions and companies.

Why it matters to your business

You do not buy RTP. You buy instant funding, instant payouts and same-day settlement as features of platforms you already use, and RTP is often the rail underneath. When a provider offers instant deposit for a percentage fee, RTP or FedNow is usually how it works. The part that actually changes your operations is ISO 20022 remittance data. If you invoice other businesses, payments arriving with invoice numbers attached means your bookkeeper stops matching deposits to invoices by hand. That's an accounts receivable improvement, not a payments feature, and it's the reason to care.

Where it gets contested

RTP is credit-push and irrevocable, which is a feature for the receiver and a genuine hazard for the sender. There is no chargeback, no dispute mechanism and no recall. That makes RTP an excellent rail for payouts and B2B settlement and a poor fit for consumer retail, where dispute rights are what make card acceptance work. Fraud on instant rails is unrecoverable by design, which is exactly why authorized-push-payment fraud has become a policy concern. The second issue is reach. 1,322 participants is a lot of institutions but not all of them, and coverage skews toward larger banks and their correspondents. A small business banking at a community institution may find its bank isn't a participant, which makes RTP unusable for that account regardless of how good the rail is. The third, more political criticism is governance: RTP is owned by large commercial banks, which is precisely why the Federal Reserve built FedNow as a public alternative. Whether a bank-owned network should be the primary instant rail is a live policy question. For a merchant, the practical answer is that having two competing instant rails is better than having one.

How to check it yourself

Ask your bank whether it participates in the RTP network and whether it supports Request for Payment. Then ask your processor what instant funding costs as a percentage and whether it's available seven days a week. A survey found 41% of small businesses would switch providers over delayed access to funds — it's worth knowing your options.

Receipts

Claims above that are checkable, with where to check them. Published so you do not have to take anyone's word for it.

RTP has over 1,322 participants as of July 2026, processed 142 million transactions totaling $576 billion in Q2 2026, has a $6.7 billion daily average value as of July 2026, has cleared 1.7 billion transactions and over $3.2 trillion since 2017, supports up to $10 million per transaction, and reports 100% uptime with zero scheduled downtime and rich ISO 20022 data
theclearinghouse.org ↗
The Clearing House operates ACH, CHIPS, Image Exchange and RTP, and The Clearing House Payments Authority serves more than 4,000 member banks, credit unions and companies
theclearinghouse.org ↗
41% of surveyed US small businesses would switch providers over delayed access to funds, and 59.3% expect faster payouts to become standard
cardconnect.com ↗