A strong payment infrastructure provides essential plumbing tocarry the financial flows of businesses. For most companies,payments move via an orderly process that has followed the sameslow, steady schedule for decades. But today, for the first time in40 years, corporate treasury departments have a new option:real-time payments (RTP). Companies can now add a new pipe totheir plumbing to accommodate funds transfers that move atunprecedented speeds.

The idea sounds compelling, but changing a core corporate systemthat's already working well can be frightening. At first sight, RTPmay seem like an intimidating, costly investment that offers onlyamorphous benefits. Cost-conscious corporate treasury departmentsrarely set aside large budgets for innovation in accounts payable(A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) systems.