Real-Time Payments Adoption Challenges: An Ambition Check for Banks

Why real-time payments transforms the operating model, not just the rail

Real-time payments (RTP) adoption is often framed as a product and network decision. In practice, it is an operating model shift: banks move from batch-oriented processing and business-hours exception handling to continuous, always-on execution where customer expectations and settlement finality compress response times. That shift changes the risk surface, the control evidence required, and the economics of delivery.

Ambition therefore needs to be validated against capability. It is easy to declare goals such as “instant P2P,” “real-time disbursements,” or “modernized bill pay.” It is harder to operate these services at scale with defensible fraud controls, sanctions screening that works in seconds, 24x7 liquidity management, and support models that can resolve customer issues without eroding trust. The adoption challenge is less about getting connected and more about sustaining safe throughput.

The core challenge categories that limit real-time ambition

Banks typically encounter four groups of constraints: legacy and platform readiness, fraud and compliance in a compressed timeframe, business economics and liquidity, and market structure questions around network reach and interoperability.

1) Technical and legacy infrastructure constraints

Real-time payments require always-on processing behavior that many legacy cores and integration stacks were not designed to support. Even where the payments engine can operate continuously, upstream and downstream systems can reintroduce batch constraints through posting windows, reconciliation cycles, and limited observability.

• Legacy batch assumptions: nightly processing, delayed posting, and deferred exception handling undermine “instant” customer outcomes.
• Modernization sequencing: banks often need to upgrade integration, event handling, and observability before explaining “real-time” as a customer promise.
• Resilience expectations: continuous availability increases pressure on failover, monitoring, and incident response maturity.

2) Security and fraud risks in an instant-finality environment

Finality removes the buffer time that banks historically relied on to detect and reverse suspicious transfers. Fraud shifts from “faster detection after the fact” to “prevention and interdiction in the moment.” This is where many RTP programs discover their true ambition limiter: controls must operate at speed without generating unacceptable false positives or customer friction.

• Authorized push payment and social engineering risk: scams exploit customer trust and urgency; banks need strong customer education, confirmation patterns, and friction calibrated to risk.
• Real-time AML and sanctions screening: checks must run in seconds, which stresses data quality, customer identity resolution, and screening architecture.
• Continuous monitoring: fraud operations must work outside business hours, with clear playbooks for containment and customer communication.

3) Business, financial, and liquidity barriers

RTP adoption can challenge existing revenue models and raises the cost of control. Banks may worry about displacing fee-based wires or overdraft-driven economics, while also needing new fraud tooling, ISO 20022 readiness, and operational capacity. Liquidity management becomes a first-class design requirement because settlement obligations do not pause for weekends or holidays.

• Revenue displacement risk: pricing and product design must anticipate shifts in customer behavior and fee tolerance.
• Implementation and run costs: security, compliance, and monitoring upgrades can exceed the cost of connectivity.
• Liquidity and limits management: banks need real-time visibility and controls that align customer entitlements, risk appetite, and funding strategy.

4) Strategic and market structure challenges

In the US, network fragmentation can create strategic ambiguity: banks may need to choose between rails, support multiple rails, or prioritize receiving versus sending based on customer demand and readiness. Globally, interoperability remains uneven, which limits seamless customer experiences across borders and between domestic schemes.

• Rail choice and reach: value depends on counterparties; executive decisions should be based on target segments and use cases, not technology preference.
• Interoperability complexity: cross-scheme alignment, messaging consistency, and dispute handling vary across markets.
• Customer awareness and trust: adoption is slower when users do not understand finality, limits, and dispute expectations.

Practical ambition checks to avoid stalled RTP programs

Executives can reduce the risk of over-ambitious RTP plans by treating adoption as a staged capability journey with explicit evidence gates. The objective is to align scope and pace to what the bank can operate safely.

• Operating readiness gate: Can the bank post in near real time, reconcile continuously, and provide end-to-end observability across the payment journey?
• Fraud and compliance gate: Can the bank prevent and interdict suspicious activity at speed, with 24x7 operational coverage and documented playbooks?
• Customer outcome gate: Are limits, confirmations, disputes, and servicing journeys designed to sustain trust under instant finality?
• Economics gate: Is there a clear value thesis by segment and use case that justifies both build and run costs, including control uplift?
• Network strategy gate: Is the rail strategy tied to reach and product priorities, including the decision to start receive-only or to enable sending early?

These checks typically lead to more realistic sequencing: begin with contained use cases (for example, select disbursements or internal transfers), prove fraud and operational performance, then expand to broader customer propositions once controls and servicing capacity are stable.

Validating growth ambition for real-time payments with capability evidence

RTP strategies become credible when leaders can benchmark ambition against demonstrated maturity in always-on operations, fraud and compliance execution, and platform resilience. A structured maturity view helps identify where roadmaps assume capabilities that are not yet consistent—such as real-time customer experiences without continuous posting, or sending propositions without proven scam mitigation and 24x7 response.

Applied as an ambition check within a strategy validation agenda, the DUNNIXER Digital Maturity Assessment helps executives evaluate readiness across payments architecture, integration and observability discipline, identity and entitlement maturity, fraud and compliance operating practices, liquidity controls, and governance effectiveness. This strengthens decision confidence on sequencing: which RTP propositions can be launched safely now, which require prerequisite investment, and where scope should be constrained until operational evidence supports scale.

References

• https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
• https://www.volantetech.com/what-are-real-time-payments/
• https://finovate.com/how-banks-can-overcome-10-challenges-with-fednow-payment-sending-and-acceptance/#:~:text=Transaction%20validation%20in%20real%20time,systems%20to%20conduct%20rapid%20checks.
• https://www.redcompasslabs.com/insights/5-challenges-us-banks-instant-payments-send/#:~:text=More%20banks%20can%20receive%20instant,US%20banks%20to%20find%20out.
• https://www.bottomline.com/resources/blog/what-us-banks-and-fis-need-know-about-adopting-real-time-payments-2025#:~:text=RTP%20adoption%20is%20not%20simply,as%20wire%20transfers%20and%20overdrafts.
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• https://finzly.com/resources/blogs/instant-payment-adoption-banks-future-proofing-or-self-limiting/#:~:text=Clinging%20to%20legacy%20systems%2C%20cost,them%20from%20instant%20payments%20offerings.
• https://www.bai.org/banking-strategies/instant-payment-adoption-are-banks-future-proofing-or-self-limiting/#:~:text=Roughly%2073%25%20of%20FIs%20surveyed,hubs%20provide%20the%20optimal%20solution.
• https://www.mtb.com/library/article/three-barriers-to-instant-payment-adoption#:~:text=It%20is%20important%20to%20realize,and%20absorbing%20overall%20implementation%20barriers.
• https://www.bai.org/banking-strategies/instant-payments-are-a-2025-priority-for-financial-institutions/#:~:text=Perceptions%20of%20fraud%20stunting%20adoption,access%20management%20and%20customer%20education.
• https://www.aciworldwide.com/blog/what-it-means-for-a-bank-to-be-real-time-ready-its-more-than-just-payments#:~:text=Building%20a%20Real%2DTime%20Bank%20Very%20few%20financial,consider%20the%20enduring%20legacy%20of%20batch%2Dbased%20systems.
• https://www.pymnts.com/tracker_posts/overcoming-obstacles-to-widespread-real-time-payments-adoption/