BNY Mellon, Citi, Verizon launch real-time bill pay

When using BNY Mellon's new Real-Time E-Bills and Payments functionality, Verizon customers with Citibank accounts can reportedly pay their bills immediately, at any time of day, 365 days a year, and enjoy greater control over their finances to help avoid overdraft fees. Additionally, Verizon customers who bank at Citi can use Citibank Online to schedule the payment to be made at a specified date and time in the future, such as on their next recurring payday or as an on-demand payout from a platform supporting a supplementary income stream, such as a ride-hailing or food delivery app.

Verizon's use of BNY Mellon's Real-Time E-Bills and Payments functionality presents an enhancement over setting up standing payment instructions across the ACH network, since automated payments can encounter insufficient fund balances, generating overdraft fees and other expenses, adding undue frustration to consumers, and creating exception scenarios for billers.

Unlike an ACH transaction or a paper check, Real-Time E-Bills and Payments are immediate and fully controlled by the consumer, who can authorise and schedule each payment to who they want to pay, when they want. The secure payment also provides the consumer with full transparency, including the ability to receive an instant acknowledgment confirming that a monthly obligation has been satisfied. This eliminates uncertainty around when funds will be debited from a consumer's account and avoids the interchange fees charged for credit and debit card payments.

While real-time payments were previously available for bank-to-bank transactions for large organisations, this is reportedly the first at-scale use of the technology in production with retail customers. This innovative functionality revolutionises the bill pay experience for both the biller and the customer, connecting BNY Mellon as the billing bank, Verizon as the biller and Citi as the customer's bank, with the transaction transmitting in real time over The Clearing House's RTP network.

The commercialisation of real-time payments for consumer bill pay expands the benefits of instantaneous payments for billers and retail customers alike and ushers in a new period of information-rich and intelligent transaction banking. The launch of the Verizon programme underscores the importance of and investment into real-time payments being made by both BNY Mellon and Citi, which were among the first banks to connect into The Clearing House RTP network that launched in 2017, and is the first new core infrastructure introduced into US payments since the ACH network launched in 1974.