The payments world is buzzing about Pay-by-Bank, and for good reason. Banks are rushing to roll it out, merchants are eyeing lower fees, and consumers and business operators want their money to move faster. But here’s what nobody’s talking about: the real challenge isn’t sending money in real time – it’s tracking, settling, and scaling it across complex business structures without losing your mind, all while managing fraud to protect your business and customers.

Pay-by-Bank promises to transform how we move money. But without the right infrastructure underneath, that promise becomes a headache. Fast payments need smart controls, or you’ll find yourself drowning in reconciliation nightmares and compliance gaps.

What Is Pay-by-Bank, and Why Now?

Pay-by-Bank is exactly what it sounds like: real-time, account-to-account payments that skip the card networks entirely. Instead of paying with plastic, customers authorize direct transfers from their bank accounts using three main rails:

FedNow: The Federal Reserve’s instant payment system, launched in 2023 and gaining momentum fast.

RTP Network: The private, bank-owned real-time rail that’s been around since 2017.

ACH: Still widely used but not truly real-time (though same-day ACH is getting close).

Push-to-Card: A fast and convenient payment rail that enables funds to be pushed directly to a recipient’s debit or prepaid card. While not fully real-time, Push-to-Card transactions are typically completed within minutes.

The numbers tell the story. According to the Citizens Bank 2025 Payment Trends Report, 63% of U.S. banks plan to offer Pay-by-Bank services in 2025, up from just 29% in 2023. Meanwhile, 78% of merchants surveyed by the Federal Reserve cite interest in real-time payments primarily to reduce card processing fees.

Several forces are driving this shift:

• Business and consumer demand: People want faster refunds, instant payouts, and the ability to move their money when they want to – not when business hours, batch processing and system limitations allow it.
• Merchant economics: Card fees eat into margins, especially for high-volume, low-margin businesses. Direct bank transfers cost significantly less.
• Platform pressure: Marketplaces and gig economy platforms need to settle with suppliers and workers instantly, not days later.

The regulatory environment is also shifting. FedNow’s rollout represents a major policy push toward real-time infrastructure, while evolving stablecoin regulations are creating new frameworks for digital money movement.

The Problem No One Talks About: Visibility

Real-time money sounds great until your treasury team can’t track it.

Most ERP systems and bank cores were built for a batch-processing world. They struggle with transaction-level insight, can’t model multi-party programs effectively, and offer limited API hooks for real-time data. When money moves instantly but your systems update overnight, you’ve got a problem.

Here’s a real-world example: A marketplace receives a Pay-by-Bank transfer into a pooled account and needs to allocate it to 300 vendors, net of fees, instantly. Without flexible, bank-grade ledgering, that process becomes delayed, error-prone, and potentially non-compliant.

Traditional banking infrastructure treats real-time payments like faster batch processing. But real-time money requires real-time controls, real-time visibility, and real-time decision-making capabilities that most systems simply don’t have.

Bringing Control to Speed

Programmable embedded ledgers can bridge the gap between real-time payments and real-world complexity.

Qolo’s Quantum Ledger turns Pay-by-Bank into game-changing infrastructure. Instead of just moving money fast, you get:

• Real-time balance updates per virtual account: Every transaction updates immediately across all account hierarchies, giving you instant visibility into fund flows.
• Sweep rules, fee logic, and segmentation per program: Automate complex business rules so money moves according to your policies, not just your payment rails.
• Multi-rail, multi-party environment support: Handle FedNow, RTP, ACH, wires, and card payments through the same control layer.
• Auditable ledger structure with full event history: Every transaction, every rule execution, every balance change gets recorded for compliance and reconciliation.

The use cases are compelling:

• Gig economy platforms: Pay-by-Bank refunds settle instantly to worker sub-ledgers, with automatic fee calculations and tax reporting.
• Commercial platforms: Auto-sweep corporate Pay-by-Bank funds across subaccounts and entities based on programmed rules.
• Treasury operations: Trigger compliance checks or reporting events directly from Pay-by-Bank receipts, eliminating manual processes.

The Future Is Programmable, Not Just Fast

Real-time payments will keep growing, but the winners will be platforms and banks that layer intelligence and orchestration on top of speed.

The embedded finance market is projected to reach $588 billion globally by 2030, according to Juniper Research. That growth will be driven by companies that can offer financial services as seamlessly as they offer their core products. But seamless requires more than fast—it requires smart.

Pay-by-Bank is just the beginning. The real opportunity lies in building infrastructure that doesn’t just move money in real time, but manages it intelligently in real time. That means programmable rules, automated compliance, instant reconciliation, and the kind of visibility that turns financial operations from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

The companies that figure this out first will own the next decade of financial services. The ones that don’t will spend it cleaning up reconciliation spreadsheets.

Real-time payments are table stakes. Visibility, programmability, and control – that’s the next competitive edge.

Ready to see how Pay-by-Bank can work for your business?

See how Qolo’s Quantum Ledger powers payments across all your rails. Talk to us about building payments infrastructure that moves as fast as your business.