Business customers today have more ways to move money than at any point in recent memory. The arrival of near-instant payment networks like FedNow and RTP has expanded the menu of options, giving companies new ways to balance speed, cost, and security when making payments.

In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Darren Beyer, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Qolo, and Hugh Thomas, Lead Analyst of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how the business payments landscape has evolved. While faster payments have captured much of the industry’s attention, they noted that speed is only one consideration. In many cases, choosing the right payment method has become a more nuanced decision.

A Panoply of Options

According to Javelin’s 2026 Commercial Payments Factbook, one of the most notable developments in business payments is that virtually every alternative to paper checks is growing at the same time—a dynamic the industry hasn’t seen before.

The payment method companies choose depends on the circumstances surrounding the transaction. When funds need to move immediately and both parties want real-time visibility into the transfer, businesses often gravitate toward RTP. In newer supplier relationships, where trust may still be developing, virtual cards are frequently the preferred option, particularly when buyers and suppliers are looking for working capital or cash management benefits.

ACH remains a mainstay for established business relationships. Companies that have worked together for years often rely on ACH because the process is familiar, automated, and dependable. Whether using standard ACH or Same Day ACH, many businesses continue to view it as a simple and efficient way to move funds.

The banking ecosystem has also split across newer instant payment networks. While many large financial institutions helped build and adopt The Clearing House’s RTP network, smaller banks have generally shown greater interest in the Federal Reserve’s FedNow service.

“The problem is that while both of those are real time networks, they don’t talk to each other,” said Beyer. “If you’re a bank that does FedNow, you can’t accept an RTP for one of your banking clients. The best way that gets solved is by both of those reaching a critical mass of acceptance on the banking side. Until that problem gets solved, those are going to continue to be throttled.”

Beyond Speed

The conversation around faster payments has been building for more than a decade. Since the Federal Reserve first outlined its vision for modernizing payments, financial institutions and technology providers have invested heavily to expand available options.

Now that those systems are reaching greater maturity, the focus is shifting. The challenge is no longer about enabling faster payments, it’s helping businesses understand when speed matters—and when it doesn’t.

For many, delaying a payment can be advantageous. A company issuing large volumes of payments may prefer to preserve cash for a few extra days. In other situations, speed can be critical, such as when paying a six-figure supplier invoice and avoiding costly late fees.

“If you were to ask 100 CFOs of varying size companies about RTP or FedNow, they might say, that’s kind of like a real-time ACH or something, isn’t it?” said Beyer. “That’s their level of understanding of what it is. Once you understand what something is, you can think about how are you going to use these things.”

“Your CFO may realize, OK, I know what RTP is, now I can hang on to my funds till the absolute last moment and then push them out in my contractual obligation to pay a payee. All that becomes more material to the CFO. That cascades down through the organization in working with providers to better understand the mandates the CFOs push in terms of hitting those cash conversion cycle goals.”

By and large, it’s less about choosing a single payment rail and more about applying rules-based decision-making. Today, more businesses have the ability to route payments based on factors such as timing, cost, and the nature of the relationship between counterparties.

“Bank of America recently had a webinar about their use of RTP for home closing costs,” said Thomas. “I don’t know that 10 years ago you would have seen a bank talking about this. But the folks involved in the ecosystem understand there’s a need for broader education in terms of how all these various different instruments get used.”

Matching the Tool to the Task

Each payment method offers its own balance of convenience, control, and risk.

Checks, despite their declining share of payments, still provide a level of flexibility. They may take longer to arrive, but senders can stop payment if something goes wrong.

Electronic payment methods come with their own safeguards. Card-based payments, including virtual cards, offer dispute and chargeback protections. ACH transactions also provide mechanisms for addressing unauthorized activity.

The trade-off becomes more pronounced with real-time payments. The same speed that makes these networks attractive can also create challenges when fraud occurs. Once funds have been sent and received, recovering them can be far more difficult.

That reality reinforces a central point, according to both Beyer and Thomas. No single payment method is right for every situation. Each fills a distinct role, and the optimal choice depends on the context and the payer’s goals.

“All the hard technical stuff is done,” Beyer said. “We’ve built all the piping, but now we need to help customers understand how best to orchestrate this. Banks have to catch up, they’re not going to go spend a bunch of money if they can’t monetize it.”

“The rest of the world has to now do the hard part of coming up with the use cases, rules-based routing, all of those different things. It’s the old adage that it takes 90% of the work to do the final 10%. That’s where we’re sitting right now with RTP and FedNow. We collectively have to get that last 10% across the line.”