B2B payments: real-time payments and open banking

Market and trends

3 min read · Chapter 6 of 10

Who holds the power

Banks hold the account, the customer and the API. In the US they set instant prices, set limits below the networks', decide whether to show a request for payment and, since 2025, price data.
Schemes split by owner. The Fed and Brazil's central bank push features and price at cost. The Clearing House carries most US instant traffic (98% of bank-to-bank instant payments, by its own count in November 2025) and answers to its bank owners.
Regulators, where they act, set the real price and who carries fraud (Brazil, the EU, India, the UK). Where they don't, as in US instant payments, incumbents win by default.
Aggregators own the developer relationship but lost free data. A revised federal rule could cap or bless what they now pay banks.
Card networks are becoming the rulebook on top of bank payments, even as a US settlement, pending final approval, would cut credit interchange by 10 basis points for five years.
Big payers and merchants choose the rail. Walmart and Amazon push bank payments to avoid card fees, and large buyers decide what remittance their suppliers get.
Platforms take the network's price but own the invoice reference, which decides whether a payment gets matched.

Tailwinds and headwinds

The forces I'd watch over the next couple of years. Processors and platforms that sit on many rails come out ahead on most; banks win on data and lose on interchange.

Tailwinds:

What's changing	Who gains	Who loses
The EU made instant payments mandatory and priced like ordinary transfers: SEPA Instant grew 73% to 10.1 billion payments in 2025.	Merchants, pay by bank providers (TrueLayer, Trustly, GoCardless)	Banks' instant surcharges; card networks at the margin
The US raised limits and subsidizes adoption: both networks allow $10 million, and FedNow volume rose 83% from Q1 to Q2 2026.	Small banks, core processors, treasury users	Nobody directly; the Fed gives up fee revenue
Card fees are under pressure: the US interchange settlement, UK card scheme-fee remedies, Amazon UK offering Pay by Bank.	Large merchants, pay by bank providers, Stripe	Card issuers' rewards economics; Visa and Mastercard
Fraud rules turn verification into a product: UK banks reimbursed £316 million in 18 months, and name checks spread.	Aggregators (Plaid, MX, Finicity), the Fed, Visa and Mastercard's protection services	Fraudsters; UK banks paying claims
Owners learn to charge: data fees, a reported UPI merchant fee, priced commercial VRP.	Banks, UPI apps (PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm), processors	Merchants above ₹2,000; fintechs paying for data

Headwinds:

What's changing	Who gains	Who loses
US banks charge for data while the federal rule sits in court and in review.	JPMorgan and other large banks; Akoya	Plaid, MX, Yodlee and the apps that rely on them
Push payments are final and the US gives business payers no scam protection: business email fraud cost $3.05 billion in FBI reports for 2025.	Card networks, whose protection argument gets stronger	US payers, especially small businesses
Card habits hold: the Kansas City Fed found in July 2026 that pay by bank isn't yet available at US points of sale.	Card issuers, Visa, Mastercard	Pay by bank providers in the US
The economics are thin: 4.5 cents a payment, FedNow's free transfers ending in 2027, UK banks earning nothing on payment initiation.	Payers and merchants, for now	Schemes and banks that fund the rails
Reach is patchy: about a fifth of US institutions on FedNow, and Canada's rail slipped from its first targets to Q4 2026.	Processors and sponsor banks that route around gaps	B2B platforms that need every payer's bank

If I could watch one thing, it would be the CFPB's revised Section 1033 proposal, under White House review since August 6, 2026: press reports say it would let banks charge for data after some free requests, which would set the price of US open banking.