Home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) have traditionally been slow, paper-heavy financial products, often requiring weeks to close and additional days for funds to arrive. NFTYDoor, a provider of an AI-powered digital lending platform that provides home equity loans, set out to challenge that norm by designing a fully digital HELOC experience, with instant payments being a core pillar of the business case from the start. 

NFTYDoor began with a clean-sheet approach. Rather than modernizing only a few pieces of an existing process, the company reimagined the entire borrower journey: digital application, automated underwriting, remote online notarization, and fast funding. The key insight was that a smoother application process alone wasn’t enough. To truly deliver on a “modern” HELOC, borrowers needed access to their funds immediately after closing. Instant payments made that possible. 

Potential borrowers generally do not have a straightforward way to access equity that is in their home. With the increase in real-estate prices over the past decade, “people are very equity rich, but they have no way of accessing that equity quickly,” said Jonathan Spinetto, managing director and co-founder of NYFTYDoor.

We've taken the home equity line of credit, a product that has existed for years, and brought it into the digital age. - Jonathan Spinetto, NYFTYDoor

From a business perspective, instant payments solved several problems at once. Borrowers often seek HELOCs for time-sensitive needs, such as emergency home repairs, renovations, contractor deposits, tuition payments, or debt consolidation. Waiting days for ACH settlement or checks undermined the value proposition. By using the RTP network, the system that carries 98% of all bank-to-bank instant payments in the United States, as the primary funding rail, NFTYDoor ensured that borrowers could receive funds instantly when the funding was authorized, including weekends and holidays. That reliability and finality made instant payments not just a feature, but a requirement for the product NFTYDoor wanted to build.

Turning Instant Payments into a Competitive Advantage 
Instant payments didn’t just improve NFTYDoor’s operations. They became a source of competitive advantage. While traditional lenders often take 40 to 45 days to close a HELOC, NFTYDoor averages roughly six calendar days, with some loans closing and funding the same day. The RTP network allows NFTYDoor to fund loans seven days a week, a capability most lenders simply don’t have. 

Ani Narayan, product manager at Modern Treasury, notes that the ability to offer instant payments opens up new opportunities for businesses. “There are unique things, or use cases and experiences, that instant payments on the RTP network really unlocks for businesses,” Narayan said. “And apart from new customer experiences, these capabilities allow the businesses to monetize” the offering as well.  

This speed fundamentally changes borrower expectations. Customers are often surprised to receive six-figure loan proceeds on a Saturday morning. That “instant economy” experience differentiates NFTYDoor in a crowded lending market and creates word-of-mouth momentum. Importantly, the company reports that roughly 80% of its loans are funded via the RTP network today, a figure that continues to grow as network adoption expands.

Instant payments also help NFTYDoor operate confidently at scale. With multi-layered identity verification, KYC checks, and remote notarization safeguards, the company mitigates fraud risk before funds ever move. By the time an instant payment is initiated, NFTYDoor has extremely high confidence in the borrower and the destination account. That careful sequencing allows the company to leverage the RTP network's speed while maintaining appropriate risk controls. 

Beyond consumer lending, NFTYDoor also uses the RTP network for B2B flows, including large, seven-figure transfers with banking and capital partners. The higher transaction limits on the RTP network have enabled NFTYDoor to move significant sums instantly, another operational edge compared to slower, wire-dependent competitors. 

How Modern Treasury Powers NFTYDoor’s Payments Strategy 
Behind NFTYDoor’s instant payment experience is Modern Treasury, which provides the payments infrastructure that makes the RTP network usable at scale for NFTYDoor. Rather than building direct, bespoke integrations with each bank, NFTYDoor relies on Modern Treasury’s API-driven platform to initiate, track, and reconcile payments across multiple rails. 

Modern Treasury enables NFTYDoor to default to RTP when a borrower’s bank is eligible, while automatically falling back to same-day ACH or other methods when it’s not. This logic is embedded directly into payment workflows, reducing operational complexity and manual intervention. Just as importantly, Modern Treasury provides real-time status updates, confirmations, audit trails, and reconciliation data, which NFTYDoor immediately provides to internal teams and customer support. 

The partnership also supports growth. NFTYDoor launched with no transaction history and has since moved well over a billion dollars through Modern Treasury’s platform. As volumes increased, the infrastructure scaled with them. 

NFTYDoor’s use of instant payments shows how the RTP network can be more than an efficiency upgrade. By aligning real-time money movement with a fully digital lending experience and partnering with Modern Treasury to operationalize it, NFTYDoor turned payments into a strategic differentiator. In doing so, the company offers a glimpse of what the future of consumer lending can look like when speed, certainty, and user experience are designed together.