By Anoop Gala, Senior Vice President, Head of Financial Technology Services, Infinite Computer Solutions
For years, real-time payments (RTPs) have been an innovation that is still somewhere out there on the horizon. But in 2026, RTPs are rapidly becoming foundational infrastructure for many businesses.
For banks, credit unions, fintech companies and others, the shift from batch processing to 24x7x365 real-time settlement is becoming a structural imperative. Treating it otherwise can mean falling behind.
There are three major shifts behind the inflection point we are seeing for RTPs, and they also serve as the reasons why leadership teams must act now.
When Consumer Expectation Meets Enterprise Imperative
Consumer behavior and technology are both drivers toward the new RTP paradigm.
Consumers live in a world where they can get what they want on demand. Commerce is frictionless and information is instantaneous. The COVID era, when people were stuck indoors, solidified these realities.
Corporate finance follows the same pattern. Treasurers optimizing working capital no longer want to wait for overnight batch windows if a transaction can be executed at 11:55 p.m. Businesses running just-in-time supply chains expect instant access to funds.
In 2026, running payments at 6 p.m. in a batch is not just outdated. It limits smooth operations.
Interestingly, some of the most agile adopters of RTPs have so far not been the larger institutions. Regional and community banks are striving to modernize wire capabilities and layer real-time rails, are transforming their digital infrastructures alongside legacy systems rather than attempting an immediate core replacement. This modernization is enabled by their digital engineering teams in collaboration with their IT services partners.
That stepwise strategy reflects an important truth: RTP transformation is not just about speed. It is about architecture, governance, and culture. Larger institutions can learn from this.
From Batch to 24x7x365
Legacy payment systems, which were built for batch processing during regular business hours, were never designed for today’s environment. Moving to a system of real-time payments requires a fundamental rethink of infrastructure.
Real-time transactions are executed in milliseconds, irrevocable once sent, and available around the clock. For these reasons, modernization requires coordinated upgrades across multiple layers:
- Infrastructure: Systems must be continuously available and highly resilient.
- Architecture: APIs and microservices must support scalable, event-driven processing.
- Data standards: Adoption of ISO 20022 enables richer data exchange and interoperability.
- Cloud strategy: Elastic scalability becomes essential as transaction volumes grow.
A growing number of institutions are pursuing parallel modernization, building new RTP capabilities alongside legacy core systems and gradually shifting their transaction volume. This approach reduces operational risk while maintaining forward momentum.
But infrastructure is just part of the equation.
Real-time payments raise the risk of fraud in new ways. Because transactions are irrevocable, fraud prevention must transition from end-of-day analysis to continuous operation with context-aware automation.
To combat fraud, RTP systems must include:
- Account and payee verification
- Real-time liquidity monitoring
- Contextual authentication
- Behavioral and geolocation anomaly detection
- AI-driven automated decisioning
Zero-trust architecture is now foundational, not aspirational. Authentication must extend beyond traditional multifactor approaches to incorporate dynamic risk scoring. If a transaction originates from an unusual geography or behavioral pattern, systems must be able to analyze and respond in milliseconds.
In this environment, RTP adoption and AI-enabled fraud detection are inseparable. Speed without intelligent automation creates unacceptable exposure to risk. Hence, the two must evolve together.
Compliance and Governance: A Cultural Transformation
Governance is probably the most underestimated dimension of RTP modernization.
Far from a simple IT initiative, governance reshapes audit, risk, compliance, product development, vendor management, and board oversight.
In yesterday’s batch world, compliance reporting was periodic and predictable. But today, with risk being continuous, controls must be dynamic and always in motion. Audit functions must adapt to 24×7 system availability.
Because this transformation involves new thinking from risk teams, it is a cultural shift as much as it is a technical one.
Data fragmentation presents a barrier for many organizations. Siloed architecture, the norm for many banks and other financial institutions, limits enterprise-wide fraud modeling and can bog down embedded finance innovation.
Modern platforms built around ISO 20022 standards allow banks to standardize governance, unify data glossaries, enable enterprise-level AI modeling and support embedded finance ecosystems. This “horizontal” data model is better suited for today’s environment.
Payments are increasingly embedded within digital experiences, whether it is ride-hailing platforms, travel marketplaces or any number of other consumer mainstays. Financial services must integrate seamlessly into those ecosystems, and institutions that modernize payments without modernizing data architecture risk limiting their future product optionality.
The Broader Lesson for Financial Institutions
Real-time payments are far more important than a simple feature release. They are a charter-level initiative requiring board sponsorship, cross-functional alignment and clearly defined operating model goals.
Financial institutions that want to thrive this year and beyond must:
- Establish an enterprise-wide RTP strategy with executive sponsorship.
- Conduct a comprehensive assessment of legacy dependencies and 24×7 gaps.
- Modernize architecture and data in tandem.
- Redesign fraud, liquidity, and exception controls for continuous operation.
- Update compliance and audit frameworks for real-time oversight.
- Strengthen vendor governance and clarify liability models.
- Retrain teams for continuous reconciliation and AI-driven monitoring environments.
The bottom line is clear: real-time payments are not simply faster payments. They represent a structural redefinition of banking infrastructure, fraud management, compliance, data governance and operating models. Future financial products will assume real-time capabilities by default.
Institutions that delay modernization risk being constrained by legacy systems in a market that no longer tolerates delay.
The inflection point has arrived. The question for CIOs and executive teams is no longer whether to adopt real-time payments, but how quickly they can transform to support them.
Author Bio:
Anoop Gala is the Senior Vice President, Head of Financial Technology Services, Infinite Computer Solutions. Anoop is a Global Business, Technology & Platform-Ecosystem Leader with over 30 years of distinguished experience driving hyper-growth across IT outsourcing, consulting, and fintech product ecosystems. A strategic architect of large-scale global organizations, renowned for a unique leadership duality: the entrepreneurial agility to build startups from the ground up and the enterprise discipline to scale multi-billion-dollar business units.
