Aptys Solutions shares how their clients have proactively built instant payments volume
10/4/2024
Aptys Solutions (Off-site) is a service provider for financial institutions that also partners with bankers’ banks and corporate credit unions to consolidate payment rails under one unified digital payment system.
In our latest profile, we spoke with Aptys Solutions’ Eric Dotson, executive vice president of sales and marketing, and Sheri Jonathan, vice president of product management, to discuss how financial institutions of all sizes can embrace instant payments and how financial institutions connected to the FedNow® Service have been able to grow their instant payment volume over time.
Q: What instant payment trends are you seeing among your clients connected to the FedNow Service?
SJ: “Since the FedNow Service entered the market, the biggest trend we’ve noted is the rapid growth in instant payments overall. Financial institutions want to meet their adoption goals quickly — they want to get on board and get going. From a volume perspective, we’ve been excited to watch our instant payments volume consistently grow month to month, and we anticipate that our transaction volumes will reach quadruple our current numbers by the end of the year.
“This growth is evidence that instant payments fill a gap for our clients and the customers they serve, and it highlights the need for further integration of instant payments into core systems and online banking platforms.”
Q: Can you share any insights into what’s driving that volume growth for your customers connected to the FedNow Service?
ED: “Anecdotally, we’ve seen clients grow their instant payments volume when they take a proactive approach. We have a financial institution client in Louisiana, for example, whose customer base features a lot of small businesses. Our client proactively approached these business customers and explained that a request for payment (RFP) can offer a better invoicing experience because the requests are digitized, transparent and trackable. This approach enables businesses to target local consumers affiliated with the financial institution and create a successful end-to-end transaction with instant payment activity on both sides. This also allows both business and consumer customers to realize the value of the FedNow Service firsthand. By taking that leading step and connecting customers with the use cases that are most relevant to them, we’re seeing financial institutions grow their volume considerably.”
Q: Bankers’ banks and corporate credit unions are a key part of your customer base. How does their FedNow Service adoption influence the wider map of FedNow-connected banks and credit unions?
ED: “Our bankers’ banks and our corporate credit unions act as critical support structures and technology solution providers. Because they focus on things like settlement, funds availability and mission-critical solutions, these institutions help enable innovation for community banks and credit unions. The efficiencies and technologies we provide to bankers’ banks and corporate credit unions then filter down into the banks and credit unions, for example, and then into the communities that those institutions serve.”
Q: Aptys Solutions helps financial institutions streamline their payment rails into one system. How does this make financial institutions more efficient and help them plan for the future?
ED: “By simplifying and unifying payment rails, we make it easier for our clients to manage data and reduce security risk from a single system that houses all their payments data. This also reduces the burden that can come with more complex systems, like compliance concerns or the need to manage and support incompatible legacy systems.
“When new payments technologies come along — like the FedNow Service — our clients leverage the same unified infrastructure they already have in place to add new rails or payment options. This could be as simple as enabling a new payment module through your usual system, which makes it much simpler for banks or credit unions to offer the latest technologies.”
Q: Smaller financial institutions may plan to take a measured approach to FedNow Service adoption. What advice would you offer those looking to gradually enable this new payment infrastructure?
SJ: “My biggest piece of advice is to stay proactive. Get out there with your customers and make the case for instant payments. The first year of the FedNow Service has proven that consumers want faster payments, and we know that the marketplace is going to continue evolving toward faster and instant solutions. Banks and credit unions must adopt a big-picture mindset and think about how they can bring these payments into their communities. All financial institutions, regardless of size, should be looking at current FedNow Service participants thinking, ‘If they can offer this to their clientele, I can, too.’”
Want to learn more about the real-world impact of instant payments? Read more FedNow Q&As here.