National and regional payment systems
A tour of the systems countries run to clear and settle payments — US ACH and RTP, Canada's Lynx, China's CIPS, Hong Kong's CHATS, India's UPI, Australia's NPP, Europe's T2.
IN ONE LINE
Every country builds its own set of roads for money.
The names differ — one place calls its instant service UPI, another calls it the New Payments Platform — but the shapes repeat.
There is almost always a fast lane for a few very large, urgent interbank payments; a broad, cheap batch road that carries payroll and bills overnight; and, increasingly, a road that never closes and moves small payments in seconds.
Once you have learned one country's set — what settles instantly and finally, what waits and nets, what runs around the clock — you can walk into another country's and recognise the same three shapes wearing local names.
This topic is that walking tour: it lines up the major national and regional systems so the patterns, not the acronyms, are what you remember.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS
Sort any country's systems along two lines and most of the map falls into place.
First, value and urgency: a high-value real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system settles large interbank payments one at a time with finality, while a bulk system such as an Automated Clearing House (ACH) collects low-value payments and settles the net difference later.
Second, availability: an instant or real-time-payments service runs continuously and pays the beneficiary within seconds.
In the United States that is Fedwire (RTGS), ACH under Nacha rules, and both RTP and FedNow for instant.
Canada runs Lynx as its RTGS.
China runs domestic clearing (CDFCPS) and the cross-border CIPS for renminbi.
Hong Kong's CHATS settles several currencies.
India runs IMPS and the UPI overlay.
Australia's New Payments Platform is instant with distributed clearing.
The euro area's T2 is the RTGS, with TIPS for instant.
HOW IT WORKS
In practice a bank chooses a rail by currency, value, urgency, and reachability, and the same choice recurs everywhere.
Send a large, time-critical interbank payment and you use the domestic RTGS — Fedwire, Lynx, CHAPS, or T2 — settling in central-bank money with no interbank credit exposure.
Send bulk payroll and you use the ACH-style batch system, cheaper but settling on a deferred net basis through a service such as the National Settlement Service.
Send a small consumer payment that must arrive now and you use the instant service — RTP, FedNow, TIPS, IMPS or UPI, the New Payments Platform.
Cross-border adds a currency and a corridor: China's CIPS clears renminbi internationally, and Hong Kong's CHATS runs US-dollar and euro settlement inside an Asian time zone.
The operator and calendar change with each system, but the decision a practitioner makes is the same shape.
THE WORDS
- ACH (Automated Clearing House)
- A batch, deferred-net system for high-volume, low-value credit and debit transfers such as payroll, benefits, and bill payments.
- Real-time payments
- Payments whose confirmed outcome and usable funds reach the customer within seconds, around the clock.
READ FIRST
CONNECTED TO
SOURCES
- Fast payments - enhancing the speed and availability of retail payments — CPMI, Bank for International Settlements
- Fedwire Funds Service — Federal Reserve Financial Services
- Principles for financial market infrastructures — CPMI and IOSCO (Bank for International Settlements)
- Payments Signal editorial teaching models — Payments Signal
Derived from National and regional payment systems. Every claim on this card is sourced on that page.