The Race to Real-Time

RTP and FedNow both saw major gains in Q2. Payment volumes, values, and participation are up as the real-time rails race to modernize U.S. payments.

Welcome to Today in Payments, I’m your host, Patti Murphy, here with your weekly dose of payments notes.

The use of real-time payments is accelerating—both in volume and value.

In Q2, RTP, the private-sector network operated by The Clearing House, averaged 1.18 million payments representing a total of $481 billion. That’s a 195% increase in value over the previous quarter. The average RTP transaction jumped from $842 in January to just over $4,000 in June.

TCH reports that 1,000 banks and credit unions are now live on the network, a 51% increase year-over-year.

Meanwhile, FedNow—the real-time payment network operated by the Federal Reserve—is showing strong momentum, too. Unlike RTP, which has been operating for years, FedNow is still new, launched just two years ago. Because it’s a Federal Reserve service, all federally insured financial institutions must have access to it. So far, around 1,400 have onboarded out of roughly 10,000 eligible institutions.

In Q2 2025, FedNow processed 2.1 million payments—up from 1.3 million in Q1—with an average payment size of about $3,000.

Both networks impose limits on transaction size: $10 million for RTP, $1 million for FedNow.

That’s all for Today in Payments. Stay tuned for your weekly dose of payments notes.