How to choose

Which rails and open banking features? Five questions

1. Night or weekend? If the money must land outside banking hours (a property closing, a supplier who won't ship until paid, a payout to a driver), instant earns its fee. For an invoice on 30-day terms, Same Day ACH usually does the job.
2. Can it reach the payer? Check reach bank by bank before promising instant collections. A request that can't be delivered needs an automatic fallback the customer never notices.
3. Who checks the payee? In the EU the payer's bank must run Verification of Payee and refunds if it skipped it. In the US the check is optional, so the product has to bring its own: the Fed's Payee Name Verification or an aggregator's ownership check, plus a callback when bank details change.
4. Push or pull? One-off invoices fit a request for payment. Recurring bills fit a standing consent with limits: Pix Automático, UK VRP, Australia's PayTo, UPI AutoPay. In the US the recurring pull is still an ACH debit.
5. Data or payment? In the US most of the value is in verifying accounts and reading balances, and those calls now carry bank fees. Payment initiation pays off where a regulator pushed it (the UK, Brazil) or where card fees are high.

My defaults, for a US receivables or payables product: RTP and FedNow both, through a sponsor bank or processor that reaches both, with Same Day ACH as the fallback and wires above the banks' limits. Requests for payment offered but not relied on. A name or ownership check on every new or changed bank account, and a "held" state for payments the receiving bank hasn't released. Instant priced as a flat fee per payment, near the couple of dollars banks charge businesses. For collections, an account link for verification with ACH debit behind it, and pay by bank priced against cards. In the UK and EU, pay by bank on invoices from day one, commercial VRP for recurring bills, and the Verification of Payee result shown before every approval.