Mastercard has announced the extension of its partnership with The Clearing House (TCH), aiming to provide additional capabilities for users. As per the information detailed in the press release, Mastercard and The Clearing House entered a multi-year collaboration that allows the two companies to work together on improved features for consumers, businesses, and governments.

This intends to enable users to implement the digital economy through real-time payments (RTP) adoption on the RTP network. Moreover, the partnership solidifies Mastercard’s role as the exclusive instant payment software provider for TCH’s RTP network, allowing both enterprises to integrate additional instant payment use cases across several payment flows. TCH launched the RTP network in 2017 in the US, with it being designed and enabled by Mastercard, and was intended to provide consumers with instant access and certainty that a payment is received, while businesses obtained improved value by simplifying payments, enabling accelerated wage disbursements, enhancing liquidity management, and optimising capital workflows.

Additionally, the RTP network supported governments in activating local economies through disbursement and settlement. Mastercard – The Clearing House collaboration objectives According to Mastercard’s officials, technology offers consumers and businesses increased choice in how they want to pay and be paid and the collaboration with TCH supports this by enabling modern real-time rails for bank-owned payments. By extending their collaboration, Mastercard improves its support of TCH and its owner banks to achieve their mutual objectives of offering safety, reliability, and efficiency of real-time payments.

Currently, real-time payments provide extensive data exchange, real-time massaging, and constant availability. The two companies intend to continue to invest and develop real-time account-to-account technologies that allow the transmission of rich payment and non-payment data in the US for the RTP network and globally. Representatives from TCH stated that, considering their company and Mastercard’s history of designing and delivering the RTP network, as well as working together to offer scalable and secure payments, the expansion of their collaboration focuses on supporting them in improving instant payment capabilities for financial institutions and their customers. The press release also mentions that TCH’s RTP network’s payment capabilities are available to financial institutions that hold approximately 90% of the US demand deposit accounts.

Moreover, the network was developed for financial institutions of all sizes and serves as a platform for improvement, allowing banks to offer new products and services to their customers. TCH’s RTP network enables direct integration for financial institutions through third-party service providers, bankers’ banks, and corporate credit unions. .