B2B payments: real-time payments and open banking

Picture a building-supplies distributor in Ohio that has sent a regional home-improvement retailer a $50,000 invoice on 30-day terms. For years the retailer paid by check or ACH, and someone at the distributor spent a morning working out which invoices each payment covered. Now the distributor's bank sends the retailer's bank a request for payment with the invoice attached. The retailer's accounts-payable team approves it in its banking portal, the retailer's bank pushes $50,000 through RTP or FedNow, the two US instant payment schemes, and the distributor's bank credits it within seconds, at any hour on any day. The invoice number travels with the money, so the match can be automatic.

Here's how the pieces fit. An instant payment is a credit push. The paying company approves, its bank (the payer's bank) pushes the money through a scheme (RTP or FedNow in the US, Pix in Brazil, Faster Payments in the UK, SEPA Instant in the euro area, UPI in India), and the supplier's bank credits the supplier within seconds. An open banking provider such as Plaid, TrueLayer or Trustly can sit next to the payer's bank: with the payer's consent, through the bank's API, it can start the payment or read the account. Only the payer's bank sends the money, though.

The diagram circles the payer's bank, with the note "no pulling it back". Once it's sent, the payer's bank can't pull it back, and no instant rail has a chargeback. Every way back after settlement is a request the other bank may refuse, a tracing process the regulator runs (in Brazil) or a reimbursement duty written for consumers (in the UK). For a business paying in the US, a push payment to a fraudster usually stays its own loss.

The words you'll hear in week one:

• Push and pull: in a push the payer's side starts the payment (instant payments, wires); in a pull the payee's side takes it under an authorization (ACH debits, cards).
• Final: once the scheme settles, no rule can reverse the payment. Settled, available to the supplier and applied to an invoice are three separate moments.
• Request for payment (RfP): a message from the payee's bank asking the payer to pay an amount by a date. The payer approves each one; it isn't a debit.
• Open banking: a third party's API access to a bank account with the holder's consent, to read it (account information) or to tell the bank to pay (payment initiation).
• Name check: confirming the name on the destination account before paying: Verification of Payee in the EU (mandatory), Confirmation of Payee in the UK, Payee Name Verification at the Fed (optional).
• ISO 20022: the message standard most new rails use; a pacs.008 moves the money and a camt.056 asks for it back.
• Prefunding: money a bank parks in advance so it can send at night and at weekends. RTP needs it; FedNow settles from each bank's own account at the Fed.

If you only remember a few things:

1. Certainty: sell a final payment that arrives with the invoice reference before you sell speed. Most business invoices aren't due at 2 a.m. on a Sunday, and nobody publishes how much US instant volume is business to business; see Instant payments for B2B: what's real.
2. Name checks: check the payee before money moves, with a callback on every new or changed bank account. After settlement the only way back is a request the receiving bank can refuse, and a US business that pays a fraudster keeps the loss; see Liability allocation.
3. Reach: keep a fallback rail behind every instant payment. Only about a fifth of US banks and credit unions are on FedNow, and fewer are on RTP, so a request for payment may never reach the payer; see How an instant payment runs, step by step.
4. Data fees: in the US, plan to pay banks for account data. The largest US bank now charges aggregators, the rule that would have banned those fees is blocked in court, and verification and data earn more than payment initiation; see How the money moves.
5. Pay by bank: price it against cards. On a large invoice it costs the seller a small fraction of a card fee, but the payer gives up rewards, float and chargeback rights, so it needs a reason to be chosen.

Cash application is in order to cash, supplier bank-detail changes in procure to pay, Pix and SPEI as payout rails in cross-border payouts, stablecoins against instant rails in stablecoins and blockchain payments, business checks in identity and trust, and OAuth and consent in login and access.

The main players

The companies behind the diagram's parties, layer by layer, in no particular order.

How they make money:

The buyers are payment companies adding bank payments. Mollie bought GoCardless for about €1.1 billion (reported), closing on September 1, 2026, and Xero paid $2.5 billion for Melio, a US bill-pay company, in 2025; TrueLayer bought two smaller European firms. The card networks did their buying earlier (Visa's Tink, Mastercard's Finicity and Aiia) and now sell protection on top of bank payments. Plaid stayed private, valued at $8 billion in a February 2026 employee share sale.

As of October 2026. Several of these companies changed owners in the last year, so check the list before you rely on it.

Back to the Ohio distributor. Its receivables platform asks the distributor's bank to send a request for payment over RTP, and the retailer's bank shows it in its treasury portal, where two people approve it. The retailer's bank pushes the money, RTP checks that the bank's prefunded balance covers it and settles, and the distributor's bank credits the account. The platform reads the invoice number off the payment and closes the invoice. The banks paid RTP a few cents, and the retailer's bank may charge the retailer a couple of dollars. If either bank weren't on RTP, or the retailer's bank didn't show requests to its customers, the request would never arrive.