The Clearing House’s RTP network saw the total value of its processed instant payments nearly double in 2024.
Payments on the RTP network reached $246 billion in 2024, an increase of 94% from the previous year. While transaction volume grew at a slower pace, by 38%, it was still strong enough to push the network’s average to over one million payments per day.
RTP accomplished this growth despite intensified competition from FedNow. Although The Federal Reserve’s instant payments service, introduced in July 2023, remains much smaller than RTP in terms of transaction volume—processing fewer than 4,000 payments per day—its growth has been even more exponential.
FedNow’s total payments volume reached nearly $17.5 billion in Q3 of 2024, up from just $492 million in Q2 and $4.8 million in Q3 2023. The average daily volume of payments processed by FedNow more than doubled between Q2 and Q3 2024.
These figures from both The Clearing House and the Federal Reserve highlight a rapidly expanding market for instant payments with considerable room for further development.
FedNow’s Advantages
FedNow is continuing to ramp up the number of institutions on its network, partly because The Clearing House, owned by several of the nation’s largest financial institutions, has made smaller banks and credit unions hesitant to adopt it. FedNow now boasts roughly 1,200 participating financial institutions across all 50 states as of October 2024. But because FedNow has attracted smaller banks, RTP remains connected to a larger share of accounts through its member institutions.
According to data from Javelin Strategy & Research, 668 financial institutions were on the RTP network as of the end of Q2 2024. That number is growing rapidly, nearly doubling since the end of Q2 2023.
Another area where FedNow has already surpassed RTP is in average payment size. In Q3 of 2024, FedNow’s average value payment exceeded $50,000, while RTP’s average remains under $800.
RTP is taking steps to close that gap. Starting February 9, The Clearing House is raising the payment limit on the RTP network from $1 million to $10 million. According to The Clearing House, this higher limit is expected to drive growth in sectors including real estate and business-to-business transactions that require larger payment amounts, presaging even further growth in this dynamic space.
