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The Real Time Payments network operated by The Clearing House Payments Co. said early Wednesday it will raise its transaction limit to $10 million, a tenfold jump from the current $1-million cap. The new limit will take effect Feb. 9, following a 60-day notice period required by The Federal Reserve.
The move comes as corporate entities that bank with TCH clients are processing more transactions that exceed the current limit and want to move those payments in real time, according to the New York City-based processor. “Corporates are not our direct customer, but they talk to their banks. We needed to have a higher limit,” a spokesman for TCH tells Digital Transactions News. The move comes with no change in fees, he adds.
It also comes as TCH’s 7-year-old RTP network has exceeded 1 million payments daily on average, a milestone it reached last month. The Fed’s competing FedNow real-time payments service, launched in July last year, operates with an upper limit of $500,000 per transaction.
RTP’s $1-million cap has been in place since 2022, but in recent years inflation and other factors have pushed transactions to higher levels, the spokesman says. In real estate, particularly, closing amounts have climbed, he says. “In real estate, we see a lot of transactions that could be over $1 million.”
He cites property closings as an example of occasions when parties need or want to settle immediately, and funds availability is not an issue. “A $1-million house these days is your average split-level in higher-priced metropolitan markets,” he says. “With RTP, you can adjust the amount up to the time you send it. It’s all pre-funded money, so you have to have the money in the account.”
The RTP network has processed $500 billion in payments since the network launched in 2017, with Dec. 2 setting a daily record at $1.242 billion, according to TCH. Some 285,000 businesses are now using RTP monthly. Third-quarter volume reached 87 million transactions accounting for $69 billion. Both numbers are quarterly records, TCH says.
