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The truth about This definition presumes finality of payment and
settlement in a bona fide bank demand deposit account,
real-time payments not in a closed-loop, nonbanking platform – in my opinion.

Part of the issue with this is the definitional aspect. You
may know that CrossCheck is located in Wine Country in
Sonoma County, Calif., and our metaphors are influenced
by our proximity to the wine industry. Illustrative of this
is "the pour." This refers to how much wine you get when
you order wine by the glass. A standard wine bottle is 750
ml, about 25 ounces. The definition is that five glasses per
bottle is standard at a restaurant.

The short pour in real-time payments
But there is something called a "short pour," which is about
four ounces. This means the restaurant gets six pours per
bottle. At $12 a pour, this generates $72 in revenue versus
a $12 wholesale cost for the bottle – $60 profit, a 20 percent
increase. Things are not always what they seem. With real-
time payments, it is all about the definition, and some of
these solutions are along the lines of the short pour.

Just like the short pour, there are some behind the scenes
By Brandes Elitch things going on with faster payments that don't quite meet
CrossCheck Inc. the eye. For instance, faster payments started with peer-
to-peer or person-to-person (P2P) transfer facilitators like
f you work in payments, you have been hearing a lot Venmo. You link your credit card, debit card or checking
about real-time payments, and its companion, open account to your Venmo account, and the funds are stored
banking. Merchants may have even asked you about there. But if you want to transfer the funds back to your
I it. It turns out that there is no simple way to explain checking account, Venmo will charge you a 1 percent fee
the state of real-time payments right now. It is a question to do that, and the transfer will take one to three days –
of definition and scheduling. hardly real-time.

In the current payment processing landscape, exaggerations And Venmo charges the merchant 2.9 percent and 30
abound, as evidenced by comments to the effect that soon: cents to get paid if funded by a credit card through the
PayPal option. But Venmo was not designed for business
• Cash will be obsolete transactions; it was designed to send and receive funds
from people you know personally and trust, so it certainly
• Banks will be replaced and disrupted by payment could not be considered a real-time payment option tailored
apps and the shift from products to platforms for merchants. In fact, Venmo is really for P2P payments.
And right now it is The Clearing House that is focused on
• There will be just six platforms globally B2B payments.
• Currencies in use will multiply
Interestingly, Venmo, like Square and Zelle, runs on the
• We will have programmable money Visa debit rails. Visa pushes the money into your Venmo
account on the Visa debit card rails and it is supposed to
Illusive real-time payments post in 30 minutes or less. For a use case, take Uber. Uber
drivers who want instant payments will pay 50 cents, or
I wouldn't bet on any of that happening soon, or ever. Just they can wait for an automated clearing house (ACH)
to be clear, other than the Federal Reserve Fedwire system, credit, which might take a day (or longer if a weekend is
no real-time payments are out there now – if you go by involved).
the definition propounded by ACI/Lipis Advisors, which
states, "A real time payment is posted to the beneficiaries Not quite same-day ACH payments
account in under thirty seconds after initiation, and that
can be sent on a 24/7/365 basis." Let's take a look at "same day payments" in the ACH world.
You will recall that the ACH was originally set up as a
batch, store and forward, next business day settlement
process, and since banks still use batch processing, this

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