United States

Real-time payments are still in their infancy in the U.S., accounting for only a 1.5% share of the total payments volume in 2023. Instant payments in the U.S. are negligible compared to paper-based payments and non-real-time electronic payments, at 18% and 80.5% of all transactions, respectively.

The growth of real-time payments is expected to ramp up, largely due to the launch of the FedNow® Service, a fully centralized instant payments infrastructure, and The Clearing House’s RTP Network. As the FedNow Service embraces merchant retail use cases as well as B2B and B2C use cases, they will fuel adoption across both instant payment rails.

Real-time payments are expected to grow at a CAGR of 31.7% (by volume of transactions) between 2023 and 2028. The growth of real-time payments in the U.S. will benefit from the gradual overall decline in cash usage, with faster digital payment options that will settle payments over instant payment rails becoming more mainstream. Growth will come more quickly in the coming years, but there is still a long way to go to reach levels of usage seen in some European markets. However, the U.S. is such a significant market overall that in 2023, it was the twelfth largest real-time payments market by number of transactions.