Mastercard has extended its multi-year partnership with The Clearing House (TCH) on real-time payments.
In partnership with TCH, Mastercard has announced plans to collaborate on innovative capabilities for consumers, businesses and governments to ‘evolve and embrace the digital economy through real-time payments’ (RTP) on the RTP network.
TCH launched the RTP network in 2017, marking the first new payment rail in 40 years designed and powered by Mastercard. The network has provided support to consumers, businesses and government, with several benefits for each sector.
These benefits include enabling faster wage disbursements, optimising capital workflows for businesses, instant access and confidence with 24/7 support for consumers and helping activate local economies through disbursement and settlement.
Recently, Mastercard has looked for other ways to help businesses as the payment processing company has announced it is launching an AI tool in 2025 that will mentor small business owners.
Lee Alexander, EVP and Chief Information Officer at The Clearing House, commented: “The Clearing House and Mastercard designed and delivered the RTP network, the premier instant payment platform in the United States, and have a strong history of working together to deliver innovative, scalable, and secure products.
“The expanded partnership will help both companies design the next generation of instant payment capabilities for financial institutions and their customers.”
Real-time payments have also been a hot talking point in Europe recently, as Iliad Solutions has launched new testing standards for SEPA real-time payments that enables real-time processing of cross-border payments within the Eurozone.
Linda Kirkpatrick, President for Americas at Mastercard, said: “Technology is providing consumers and businesses greater choice in how they want to pay and be paid.
“Our long-term partnership with The Clearing House supports choice in payments through the enablement of modern and ubiquitous real-time rails for bank-owned payments. We’re pleased to extend and enhance our support of The Clearing House and its owner banks to deliver on our mutual goals to provide safety, reliability, and efficiency of real-time payments.”
