9OCTOBER 2020The world is in the midst of a radical digital transformation, and everything about everything is changingnot a true real-time payment solution, but funds availability is nearly instant. This pre-funding model creates risk. On the other hand, an M&T specific challenge with RTP was its incompatibility with our main payment platform. Due to this, we needed a partner that could help us implement RTP in a new environment. In the end, we decided to go with a partner that could provide a sophisticated hosted environment that integrated with platforms running in our own data center. Identifying a suitable RTP vendorWhile selecting a third-party technology vendor for M&T's RTP, our focus was to choose a platform that could be API enabled and easily integrated, have a robust, secure, reliable and fault-tolerant infrastructure, and offered a ramp up to volume-based pricing. Keeping all these criteria in mind, we took a collaborative approach toward the vendor selection process. Internally, we aligned the right resources from technology, operations, legal, third party risk, procurement, enterprise architecture, and the business lines to agree on a set of guiding principles and identify our expectations from RTP over the next few years. We collectively agreed that we were not looking for the cheapest solution, but a vendor with the capabilities to build an economically viable payment model that can handle further enhancements as the landscape continues to evolve.The Future of RTP Most banks today have already built the core capabilities of Zelle and RTP into their banking solutions or are in the process of doing so, and the next 12 to 18 months will help us truly comprehend the capabilities of these payment rails. We will also see innovations around customer-facing products and services in the business-to-consumer, consumer-to-business, and consumer-to-consumer sides of financial transactions. Embracing Change to WinThings are changing quickly in the payments space, and if you're standing still, it means you're falling behind. There is increased competition at the point-of-sale and a proliferation of non-banking entities in the payments ecosystem. Legacy banks fighting to maintain the status quo could find themselves behind their competition unless they are constantly innovating. To be successful in payments, it is imperative to anticipate shifts in consumer behaviors and preferences and to use these insights to build deep integrations into the way people and businesses live and operate. Meanwhile, the old rules of reliability, security, performance, and availability still hold true. Matt Egyhazy
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