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Cross River Bank announced June 9 the launch of Request-for-Payment (RfP) – aimed at streamlining inbound money movement.

The Fort Lee-headquartered company says the launch adds to its growing suite of instant payment capabilities, enhancing funding agility across the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network. The feature will be first implemented by Plaid – on its Plaid Transfer platform – enabling secure, real-time pay-ins for Carvana customers.

Cross River created RfP to solve a critical pain point for the payments industry: How to fund instant transactions without relying on inefficient pre-funded accounts. Cross River notes that while outbound payments have become instant, inbound funding has lagged. That’s due to a dependence on ACH and wire transfers, which operate on batch processing and limited banking hours.

“The current reality of money movement is imbalanced – payments go out in seconds, but pay-ins often take a day or more,” said Adam Goller, executive vice president and head of fintech banking at Cross River. “RfP is a smarter, more flexible way to receive incoming funds.”

Key RfP features include:

• Allows businesses to send a secure, digital request for payment
• Enables payers to authorize and send funds instantly with greater control
• Reduces operational friction with delayed deposits
• Improves customer experience with smooth, real-time pay-in options
• Built on Cross River’s proprietary API-based banking core infrastructure, COS
• Developed with security, transparency and compliance at its core
• Each RfP is presented to the recipient by the receiving financial institution for explicit authorization. This ensures full control over every transaction and adds a critical layer of security trust – while also improving user experience

“It gives our partners greater control over timing, real-time visibility into each transaction, and reduces the need for overfunding or constant balance monitoring – all while delivering a better experience for the end user,” said Goller.

Brian Dammeir, global head of payments and financial management at Plaid, said that instant payment rails unlock huge value for businesses and end customers by reducing friction, accelerating funding and boosting conversion.

“Through our partnership with Cross River, Plaid Transfer now offers instant pay-ins, instant payouts, and Same Day ACH, as part of a full solution with best-in-class account linking and optimized conversion, so customers can tailor bank payments across their businesses,” said Dammeir.

More details on RfP are available here and here.