The Clearing House plans to take its RTP instant payments network across US borders. The bank-owned operator said on August 26, 2026, that rules allowing “one-leg-out” payments take effect in September, and that a cross-border pilot will follow in the first half of 2027. BNY is among the first banks signed up.
In a one-leg-out payment, only one end of the transaction sits within a given payment system. The other end is in another country, often in another currency and under different rules. The domestic system handles its half of the chain and hands the rest to a counterparty.
RTP becomes the US leg of international payments
Until now, RTP has only settled payments between two US accounts. The rule change lets the network serve as the US leg of an inbound or outbound international payment. It also loosens the conditions for foreign banks to participate, which by itself increases the number of institutions that can send or receive payments on the network.
- Inbound payments: a foreign bank initiates the payment, and RTP credits the US beneficiary’s account within seconds.
- Outbound payments: a US payer settles on RTP, and a counterparty takes over for the foreign leg.
- Currency conversion: left to participating banks; the network does not handle it.
- Applicable rules: each leg keeps its own, including on recourse and reject deadlines.
A domestic network already setting records
RTP has been live since 2017 and caps individual payments at $10 million. On May 1, 2026, it set two single-day records: 2.27 million payments worth $8.62 billion. The Clearing House says the network handles more than 1.5 million payments on a typical day and is approaching $500 billion in value per quarter.
“RTP will be the first US instant payments network to have cross-border payments capability,” The Clearing House spokesperson Greg MacSweeney said. Carl Slabicki, BNY’s head of commercial, global payments and trade, pointed to demand: “There’s a lot of demand from overseas to be able to pay to and from U.S. beneficiaries on a 24/7 basis.”
The Clearing House races FedNow abroad
In April 2026, the Federal Reserve proposed extending FedNow internationally but set no start date; several banks had asked for a pilot first. The Clearing House, owned by large US and foreign banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citizens, Deutsche Bank, and Santander, aims to get there first. The two systems are not mutually exclusive. A bank can join both, and corporate payers will choose based on how far each network’s correspondent relationships actually reach.
| RTP (The Clearing House) | FedNow (Federal Reserve) | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | One-leg-out rules take effect in September 2026 | Extension proposed; comment period closed in June |
| Pilot | Planned for the first half of 2027 | Requested by banks, no date set |
| Governance | Private operator owned by banks | Central bank |
| Foreign participants | Conditions eased | Undecided |
Europe has run the same model since 2023
The approach isn’t new. The European Payments Council launched its One-Leg Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme on November 28, 2023, its first scheme to reach beyond SEPA’s geographic scope. It covers only the euro leg of an inbound or outbound international instant credit transfer, leaving the other end to the rules of the country concerned. The Clearing House is splitting payments along the same lines.
The issue goes beyond a rivalry between two US operators. Cross-border instant payments run into the same obstacles everywhere: currency conversion, the operating hours of settlement systems, sanctions screening, and liability when something goes wrong. Splitting a payment into two legs removes none of them. But it lets each system handle the part it controls, without waiting for a global standard to reconcile them.