Ambitious businesses are looking to benefit from real-time benefits in the coming year, based on a survey of 150 business that range in size from $10 million to more than $500 million.

While paper checks are still the most common method of payment for 75% of businesses surveyed, 41% are discussing plans to move to RTP network payments.

“One of the surprising things was how much cash and paper checks are still sloshing around in the system. I am a 30-year cash management veteran, and we have been talking about taking paper out of the system for the longest time,” Michael Cummins, head of treasury solutions at Citizens, told Forbes.com.

We have seen a decline in checks and cash, but there still is a lot of it out there,” he added

Cummins added that it is still early stages to see the cost basis for the RTP network compared to checks. “The cap on payments is $25,000, although everyone thinks that will go higher over time. But to the extent that corporate systems are able to accept the payments and populate their systems, it takes out a lot of manual and paper processes of reconciliation,” he said.

While paper checks stubbornly remain in use, Citizens Bank believes that change is coming.

“We might be at a tipping point in the market, [in which] the market just demands faster payments,” said Matt Richardson, head of product solutions at Citizens Bank, told PYMNTS.com.

Giving companies and individuals the ability to send a request for payment over the RTP network can lower reconciliation hurdles.

Currently, “you’ve got multiple types of payments coming in, and reconciling all the data from those payments can be a real challenge,” Richardson said. “Leveraging requests for payment could really help in those situations.” 

Read the entire Forbes.com article.

Read the entire PYMNTS article.