Instant payments integration becomes the next test for corporate treasury

Instant payments integration has become the harder phase of real-time payments adoption, according to Cheryl Gurz, vice president of Real Time Payments Product Management at The Clearing House. After eight years of industry outreach and infrastructure spending, Gurz told PYMNTS that awareness has improved, while the economic impact now depends on whether banks, FinTechs, software providers and treasury platforms can embed the rails inside daily finance workflows.

Gurz said companies increasingly understand what instant payments can do, but many cannot use them from the systems where treasury, accounting and operational decisions are made. That gap puts pressure on providers to connect real-time payment capabilities to enterprise resource planning systems, treasury workstations, bank APIs and back-office tools.

Why is instant payments integration hard for companies?

Instant payment rails allow money to move outside traditional banking hours, including weekends. For a business, the value rises when that capability is available inside the software used to approve invoices, manage cash, pay suppliers and address exceptions.

The obstacle, Gurz said, is often the existing back office. Many companies still operate payments systems built decades ago, sometimes in programming languages that few current employees fully understand. Concern about disrupting those systems has slowed upgrades, even as a new rail gives businesses a reason to review the architecture rather than add another payment option to an older stack.

Gurz told PYMNTS that the industry has been “successful in awareness” and that the next phase is integration. In her view, companies need real-time payments to appear in the places where finance teams already work, rather than as a separate function available only through a standalone banking portal.

How does real-time treasury work?

Real-time treasury refers to managing payments, liquidity and working capital on a continuous basis across an organization. Once a company connects instant payment rails to treasury and accounting systems, Gurz said it can add workflow automation, artificial intelligence, agentic AI and automated handling of routine tasks.

That could change how corporate finance teams spend their time, according to Gurz. Instead of initiating payments, reconciling transactions and handling repeated exceptions manually, staff could spend more attention on liquidity planning, supplier relationships and balance sheet use.

The 24/7 feature of instant payments can also affect working capital decisions. Gurz gave the example of an invoice that offers a discount if paid within 10 days. If the deadline falls on a Sunday, a company using traditional banking hours may need to pay earlier to secure the discount, while an always-on payment rail lets it keep cash until the payment is due.

Gurz described that as “precision payments,” saying companies can pay on Saturdays and Sundays once they have completed the required integration work.

What are banks and software providers being asked to do?

Gurz said speed is becoming a basic expectation rather than the main differentiator. The advantage, she told PYMNTS, comes from helping end users apply that speed to economic benefits or better customer experiences.

An instant payment available only through a bank portal may solve an urgent problem, but Gurz said embedded access can change broader operations. If real-time payments sit inside accounts payable software, ERP systems or treasury workstations, companies can use them when managing liquidity, releasing inventory, paying suppliers and responding to exceptions.

Customer expectations are also shifting. Gurz said some users will wait for existing providers to add real-time capabilities, while others may look for another provider if the functionality is unavailable.

Adoption can begin with a specific operational failure rather than a companywide payment overhaul. Gurz cited a middle-market business that was placed on credit hold while waiting for construction materials. The company found an instant payment option in its bank portal, paid the supplier immediately and released the goods without delaying its customer’s project.

Gurz said experiences like that reduce education barriers because users see the rail solve a concrete problem. Over time, she said, those individual cases could push companies toward treating payments as a strategic source of value and a foundation for real-time treasury.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.