FIS and The Clearing House Payments Company (TCH) announced the launch of a hosted Real-Time Payments Incubator service for early-adopter financial institutions in the United States.

The service – the first of its kind in the country – is designed to accelerate the path to real-time payments for U.S. financial institutions by lowering their cost of entry for connecting to the TCH Real-Time Payments (RTP) platform.

The service uses FIS Open Payment Framework technology, operating via the TCH Real-Time Payments platform, to clear and settle payments in real-time. Offered as a hosted service, the solution allows financial institutions to begin application and testing of real-time payments in a secure, verified environment without need for heavy, upfront investment.

‘We hear regularly from our clients that they want to get to real-time payments as quickly as possible, but without all of the upfront costs and complexity,’ said Anthony Jabbour, chief operating officer, Banking & Payments, FIS. ‘This breakthrough incubator service from FIS takes the hassle out of connecting to The Clearing House Real-Time Payments platform, enabling financial institutions to get to the future faster and begin realizing the benefits of real-time payments.’

‘For real-time payments to truly take off, banks of all sizes need to have easy, affordable access,’ said Russ Waterhouse, executive vice president, Product Development and Strategy, The Clearing House. ‘Combining the power of The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments platform with FIS’ leading edge technology and services, we are transforming the payments landscape in the U.S. and around the world.’

The Real-Time Payments Incubator service offers centralized processing of real-time payments along with robust administration, standard interfaces to bank applications, automated service level support, and continuous management of new releases and functionality. Clients can expand their use of real-time payments within the service, or seamlessly move their applications to an on-premises environment.

The new service will be jointly presented at FIS’ booth, No. 1219, at PAYMENTS 2017, NACHA’s payments solutions conference this week in Austin, Texas.

The real-time payments initiative with The Clearing House continues FIS’ global leadership in advanced payments solutions. FIS already has production real-time payments environments in Singapore, the UK, Australia and Chile, and has projects underway in Asia and Europe.