Realtime

API Documentation

Column enables you to immediately send funds, receive funds, and request payment (RFP) through both the Federal Reserve's FedNow Service and The Clearing House's Real Time Payment Network. These transfers can be sent to and from Column 24/7/365 and funds are credited instantly as long as the FedNow Service and Real Time Payments Network are operating. We are thrilled over 2,400 banks support Realtime transfers today and more are joining weekly.

As you'll see in our Realtime transfer APIs, you can easily send and receive Realtime transfers. Because both payment rails leverage ISO 20022 messages, Column simply exposes all necessary transfer data to you and takes care of routing the transfer over these rails ourselves. We will route your transfer over FedNow or the Real Time Payments Network given the payment rails a receiving institution supports and the amount you are sending.

Missing something that you'd find helpful? Send us an email at support@column.com.

Raw Data

Realtime transfers on both the FedNow Service and Real Time Payments network use the ISO 20022 messaging format. ISO 20022 messages contain an immense amount of data that we make available in our Realtime transfer API payloads.

Limits

Realtime transfers are subject to limits set by the Federal Reserve and The Clearing House. The FedNow Service has a per-transaction limit of $500,000 while the Real Time Payments Network has a per-transaction limit of $10,000,000.

Valid Characters Permitted

The ISO 20022 message standard defines a set of valid characters permitted in FedNow and RTP messages. Messages with invalid characters will be rejected by the FedNow Service and Real Time Payments Network. The following regular expression can be used to detect invalid characters [^A-Za-z\d/\-?:( ).,'+]. Valid characters include:

  • Alphanumeric: A-Za-z0-9 and spaces
  • . (period)
  • , (comma)
  • ? (question mark)
  • : (colon)
  • / (forward slash)
  • ( (left parenthesis)
  • ) (right parenthesis)
  • ' (apostrophe)
  • + (plus)
  • - (minus/hyphen) The following additional characters are allowed for emails:
  • @ (at)