Real-Time Payments with Jessica Pinkston // Cornerstone Hot Takes

What are you seeing in terms of use cases for real-time payments that maybe make sense, or are you not? Do we think there’s a little more hype than reality?

There are a lot of financial institutions still waiting on FedNow.

Okay.

And so that’s really going to be the waterfall moment in terms of availability. As to whether businesses are ready for real-time payments, they think that they are, and they think that it’s a need. But when you drill down into how they really expect to use it, and when we look at same-day ACH adoption and the slow trajectory that took, I can understand your skepticism. I don’t think that you’re alone in that.

Sure.

However, I don’t think that it’s going to be business expectations that are going to drive business-originated real-time payments. It’s going to be consumer expectations. They’re going to expect to be able to pay a bill in real time.

So, from the receiving side, businesses need to be ready for it. They’re also going to expect to be paid in real time.

We’ve seen some businesses now, I’ll use McDonald’s as an example because I was just recently going through the drive-thru because I have children.

Sure.

What they do now is, when you finish your shift and you enter your time, you’re paid in real time. Daily payment.

As we move more into a gig economy and as hustle culture continues on the consumer side, I think that’s where we can see it opening up in the real-time payments space.

It’s going to be less, I believe, in the business-to-business space than we originally thought. But I think it’s going to be consumer expectations that are really going to drive the business use cases.