Our Realtime payments product is now available in the United States.
You can use Column to instantly send, receive, and request dollars, through both the RTP® network (The Clearing House) and FedNow® Service (Federal Reserve Financial Services).
Realtime payments can reach over 75% of bank accounts in the US, with funds instantly credited and available 24/7/365. We’ve been quietly powering some of our biggest customers with these rails for over a year — now we’re making them generally available because Realtime payments are ready for prime time in the United States.
On the surface, Realtime payments looks like a relatively simple product (feature not a bug). But these rails are powerful:
Instantaneous.
Cheaper than wires, faster than ACH.
Accessible on nights, weekends, holidays.
Large-dollar capable.
Final and irrevocable.
Actual dollars are moved instantly and available instantly. That has enormous implications, whether you’re a baker paying a flour supplier on a Sunday morning, or a business moving millions in liquidity between accounts overnight. This tech also allows for brand-new payment methods like Realtime RFP, or request-for-payment.
There’s this narrative that the US is a laggard compared to Brazil's Pix or India’s UPI. Which may have been warranted up to now, but after years of work, the tech and networks are ready. We’re at an inflection point: the adoption bottleneck has shifted to developers. This is a good thing! Companies can adopt and use Realtime payments today without any real downsides. We’re flowing billions of dollars over these rails — Column is now the largest transactor of real-time payments in the United States.
We’ve built the most sophisticated and scaled real-time infrastructure in the industry. And with 1,600+ banks supporting these transfers on the same account and routing numbers you use for ACH and wires, Realtime payments are ready. to. go.
Enough talk. These are live and usable right now. We wrote an extensive guide on how to go live with Realtime payments, and updated our API docs. Reach out to open an account if we’re not working together yet. Happy building!