B2B payments: real-time payments and open banking
05
Costs and pricing
4 min read · Chapter 5 of 10
How the money moves
Schemes earn cents, banks earn dollars, processors earn percentages.
| Flow | Who pays whom | Rough amount (Oct 2026, list) |
|---|---|---|
| Instant payment | Sending bank → The Clearing House or the Fed | $0.045 a payment; nothing to receive |
| Request for payment | Requesting bank → network; on RTP, also → payer's bank | $0.01; plus $0.10 to the payer's bank when an RTP request is paid |
| Instant send and receive | Business → its bank | About $2 out and $0.40 in, at one US bank |
| Pix | Receiving bank → central bank | R$0.01 per 10 payments; free for individuals; banks may charge businesses |
| UPI merchant fee | Merchant → banks and apps | 0.4% above ₹2,000, capped at ₹300, from October 15, 2026 (reported) |
| Data access | Aggregator → JPMorgan | Not disclosed |
| Pay by bank | Merchant → processor | 0.5% plus 20p at Stripe in the UK |
| ACH debit through a processor | Merchant → processor | 0.8%, capped at $5, at Stripe in the US |
| A card on a $50,000 invoice | Seller → issuer, network and acquirer | About $510-1,450 |
The $0.10 on RTP runs backwards on purpose: the requesting bank pays the payer's bank for showing requests to its customers.
The money in US instant payments sits with banks and processors. One bank's small-business schedule charges $2.00 to send an instant payment and $0.40 to receive one, against $1.00 for an ACH payment beyond 15 free ones; I couldn't find itemized instant prices at the largest US banks. Processors price bank payments as a percentage, and Stripe's US "instant bank payments" at 2.6% plus 30 cents sit close to its card price.
In the UK the bank-side money is missing. On a £500 checkout at Stripe's list prices, a standard card costs the merchant £7.70 and Pay by Bank £2.70. On the card the shopper's bank earns £1.00 (debit) or £1.50 (credit) in interchange; on Pay by Bank it earns nothing and carries the Faster Payments cost. That's why UK banks are lukewarm, and why commercial VRP and Visa A2A both promise a model that pays every party: for commercial VRP, reportedly a fixed fee per payment from the provider to the bank, amount unpublished.
India is moving away from a zero price for merchants, to fund the apps that run UPI. The fee in the table comes from press reports of an NPCI circular I couldn't read, and the reports disagree on the details; small payments and small merchants stay free.
Receivables and payables platforms earn subscriptions, fees per payment and interest on balances; BILL moved $371 billion in its fiscal year to June 2026, on the strength of linking payments to invoices more than any rail.
How companies of different sizes use it
Nobody publishes spend on instant payments or open banking by company size, so the patterns below are my rough reading of list prices and a few named cases.
A startup (under 50 people) uses open banking without noticing: bank feeds in its accounting software, an account check when a customer links a bank. It pays suppliers through a bill-pay platform, sometimes with a fee for an "instant" option, and takes pay by bank through its processor at list prices. A founder owns it until a large customer wants to pay by request or wire, or a fake "new bank details" email arrives.
A scale-up (about 50 to 500 people) builds it into its product: payment links and requests, account verification at onboarding, payouts by RTP through a sponsor bank (which brings in RTP's on-behalf-of rules). It negotiates data fees and starts to see banks' fees passed through.
A mid-market company (about 500 to 2,000 people) meets instant payments in its bank's treasury portal: RTP or FedNow for urgent supplier payments, Same Day ACH for the rest. Since June 2026, fraud-monitoring rules from Nacha, which writes the ACH rules, cover every business that originates ACH, which pushes it to formalize how it verifies new bank details.
An enterprise (about 2,000 to 10,000 people) runs mixed rails: wires for large and time-critical payments, Same Day ACH up to $1 million, RTP or FedNow for liquidity moves and payments outside banking hours. Its questions are prefunding, rich remittance and each bank's limits.
A Fortune 500 company (revenue above about $7.5 billion) sets the rail for its suppliers, since big payers choose how they pay and what remittance they send. Some push pay by bank to cut card fees: Walmart announced pay by bank at online checkout through Fiserv in 2024 (I found no 2026 update), and Amazon UK added Pay by Bank in February 2026, by one vendor's account.
What changes as a company grows:
Startup
- Typical setup
- Bank feeds, account linking, a bill-pay platform
- Owner
- Founder
- What it pays
- List prices, a few dollars per instant payment
Scale-up
- Typical setup
- Requests, account checks, RTP payouts via a sponsor bank
- Owner
- Payments lead
- What it pays
- Negotiated data fees; sponsor-bank fees
Mid-market
- Typical setup
- Bank portal for urgent payments; Same Day ACH for the rest
- Owner
- Controller or treasurer
- What it pays
- Bank price lists
Enterprise
- Typical setup
- Wires, Same Day ACH, RTP and FedNow for liquidity
- Owner
- Treasury
- What it pays
- Account analysis fees
Fortune 500
- Typical setup
- Sets suppliers' rails; pushes pay by bank at checkout
- Owner
- Group treasury
- What it pays
- Negotiated; avoids card fees