BlockRiver Blog | Real-Time Rails Are Pulling Treasury Mandates Away From Banks: What Transaction Banking Teams Need to Know

The numbers tell the story clearly. According to research cited by Fiserv, 58% of businesses are already using a fintech for a core cash management or treasury service. More striking: over 25% of corporate treasurers at midsize and large companies say they will definitely or probably switch financial institutions within the next two years. The attrition isn't hypothetical, it's underway.

The driver is straightforward. Corporate treasury operations now run around the clock, across time zones, with expectations shaped by consumer payment experiences. But most banks still settle through batch processing windows designed for a different era. When a treasurer needs to move funds on a Saturday evening to cover a supplier payment in Singapore, the bank that can only process that request on Monday morning loses the mandate to the one that settles in seconds.

The Clearing House's RTP network processed $481 billion in Q2 2025 alone, a 195% increase from the previous quarter. The network now averages over 1.3 million payments per day and recently hit a single-day record of 2.05 million transactions. The Federal Reserve's FedNow service, meanwhile, has grown to over 1,500 participating institutions. These aren't experimental volumes. They represent structural demand for always-on settlement that batch-processing systems cannot satisfy.

The competitive threat extends beyond domestic real-time rails. Stablecoin payment volume reached $390 billion in actual payments in 2025, according to McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, more than doubling from the prior year. While that remains a small fraction of global payment flows, it's concentrated in precisely the use cases where banks are most vulnerable: cross-border B2B settlement and treasury operations where traditional correspondent banking is slow and expensive. An EY-Parthenon survey of corporates and financial institutions found that 77% identified cross-border payments as the most compelling stablecoin use case, driven primarily by the promise of reduced transaction costs.

The pattern emerging from the data is consistent. PayTech players can onboard merchants in under 60 minutes for as little as $214, according to Capgemini's World Payments Report 2026. Banks take up to seven days and spend up to $496 per onboarding. Only 19% of bank executives feel confident in their ability to deliver high payment success rates and reliable infrastructure, while 70% of merchants say those capabilities are what they value most.

The Capgemini report found that 40% of small and mid-sized merchants are considering switching from banks to PayTech providers. Only 26% of bank executives express confidence in offering advanced fraud prevention and data security. The confidence gap reflects a deeper structural problem: legacy systems that were never designed for real-time, always-on operation.

Banks that have invested early in real-time capabilities demonstrate what's possible. U.S. Bank uses The Clearing House's RTP network to deliver loan funds to auto dealers instantly, available seven days a week including holidays. The traditional ACH method for the same transaction takes several days, especially when sales occur outside banking hours. The operational difference translates directly into client retention: dealers with access to instant settlement have better cash flow visibility and competitive positioning.

The infrastructure challenge for most banks is not primarily about budget. As payment experts note, the problem is typically misallocation, spending on maintaining existing systems rather than funding their replacement. The more banks try to accommodate legacy architecture, the more expensive the eventual transition becomes.

Some institutions are taking a sidecar approach. NatWest's Mettle operates as a separate digital bank built on different technology from the parent institution. This model allows experimentation with modern rails without attempting to retrofit decades-old core systems. Cross River Bank built an API-driven banking core in-house and now moves over $1 billion monthly in real-time disbursements across RTP and FedNow, powering embedded payments for fintech partners.

The question for transaction banking leaders is not whether to modernize, but how quickly competitive erosion will force the decision. Businesses increased their real-time payment usage by 61% last year, and 60% expect their RTP usage to continue growing over the next 12 to 24 months. Financial institutions that cannot support this trajectory are already watching clients move.

The coming years will bring additional pressure from digital asset rails. Nearly half of PayTech players are prioritizing CBDCs and stablecoins, compared to only 23% of banks. Treasury management platforms are beginning to integrate native digital asset capabilities alongside traditional cash positions. The infrastructure gap will widen as these capabilities become expected rather than novel.

For heads of transaction banking and treasury services, the operational calculus has shifted. The question is no longer whether modern settlement capabilities matter to corporate clients, the survey data and volume growth make that clear. The question is whether your institution's infrastructure can deliver what those clients will demand next quarter, and the quarter after that. Banks that treat this as a technology upgrade project may find themselves reclassified by their clients as legacy infrastructure providers, useful for certain regulated functions, but not for the treasury operations that matter most.