A company prefunds or pays balances for its employees' corporate cards generally through ACH transactions or a wire transfers. The use of corporate credit cards for many businesses has increased in recent years, and employees like the convenience of a card due to its familiarity and almost universal acceptance by vendors, partners and suppliers. As the popularity of corporate cards has grown, many companies and employees have found that cards are reaching spending limits due to heavy company travel or large purchases for corporate events. The result is often a scramble by the employee and the company’s accounts payable team to arrange a payment to re-fund or clear a card’s balance so an employee can continue to travel on company business, or purchase supplies for an office. Through an ACH transaction card balances may not be credited for days, causing a halt in the company and employee’s transactions – which are often time sensitive. A wire transfer, although faster than ACH, is costly and is restricted by business hours. Real-time payments over the RTP® network removes these potential payment delays from the funding process.

Many companies, especially small and mid-size businesses are now using real-time payments with their corporate cards to help remove payment friction for employees and to keep business moving. For instance, U.S. Bank, one of the earliest participants on the RTP^® network, has recently seen a rapid increase in the number of companies using real-time payments to fund their corporate cards.

With real-time payments over the RTP^® network, a company can prefund or pay the balances on its corporate cards the moment more spending ability is needed. The result is a seamless payment process that immediately delivers a payment to the bank issuing the corporate card, which removes unnecessary stress for employees.