Payments Nerds: Transforming Real Estate Transactions with Real-Time Payments

Speaker 1 (00:06):

You are listening to “Payments Nerds,” a podcast where we share perspectives on all things payments. If you are a payments nerd too or are a little bit curious about what’s going on in the payments world, you are in the right place. Let’s start the show.

Greg MacSweeney (00:22):

Hello and welcome to this episode of “Payments Nerds,” the official podcast of The Clearing House. I’m Greg MacSweeney and I’m your host for this episode.

(00:29):

Returning listeners will recall that here at “Payments Nerds” we focus on the happenings and developments in the payments world, really anything that’s payments related. While we do focus on a number of different payment topics, we often talk about real-time payments, which in this case is really talking about payments on the RTP network, which is currently the only operational real-time payments rail that’s open to all depository institutions in the United States. So, we’re always looking to highlight how different users and financial institutions are using RTP in ways to create new products and to create new services for customers and really innovative ways to move payments faster to solve problems. Who doesn’t like to get their money faster? I mean, that’s a key factor for customer satisfaction, and also to create new business opportunities.

(01:16):

And one of the cool things about the RTP network is that financial institutions and their customers are working with their clients to come up with some pretty innovative new ways to use real-time payments.

(01:26):

Today’s[JL1]  are different, and we call those use cases, and we’re going to talk about one today. So, we’re going to talk about real-time payments in the real estate space. So, many listeners, like many of you and me, have bought or sold real estate in the past, and one thing becomes pretty clear as you go through the real estate closing process. I guess you could say it’s not up to date with where we are with the rest of society, with things being digital, things moving quickly. There’s a lot of paper involved. The workflow looks like it’s a little older. And while many things have moved to instant — think about your online shopping or think about how you consume media nowadays — you stream it on demand. Real estate is kind of slowly moving in that direction. So, we’re going to talk about how payments in real estate is really starting to take a big step forward to help smooth out that process and make it, just join us today in today’s real and instant world.

(02:16):

So, joining me today is Bob Beams[JL2] , who is the founder and CEO of EMTransfer[JL3] , a provider of a real estate-specific cash management platform [inaudible 00:02:25][JL4] . And also joining me is Ricky Booth, who is a senior manager of real-time payments at KeyBank. So, enough for me about what’s going on with real estate. Let’s hear it from Bob, who is in the real estate space and working with clients day to day. Let’s discuss the payments landscape in the real estate industry and what’s going on currently. And Bob, walk us through what’s going on with payments real estate and how they are typically made today.

Bob Beams (02:49):

Yeah. For sure. Thanks, Greg.

(02:51):

Well, there’s rumors and there’s times when real estate was paid for with say, livestock, but those days are kind of gone. You might feel still in that kind of time frame. The main tools used today are things like checks and wires. And within a real estate transaction, there’s multiple movements of money that take place. We tend to be siloed. It’s like my role is the buyer, my role is the seller. So, you only see your movement, but there’s lots of movements that take place.

(03:17):

So, when it comes to starting the real estate transaction, we’re collecting things like earnest money. And as we get closer to closing a real estate transaction, you’re collecting the buyer’s down payment and their loan proceeds. And these happen at different times. And different methods might be used. You might use a check for earnest money and a wire for down payments.

(03:36):

Once the money’s received and all the paperwork signed and it’s time to finalize this thing, now the settlement company has to send that money out and disperse it. So that’s going to consist of paying off loans, if the seller had a loan on their house; paying the agents their commissions; (and) paying the recording fees with the county, utility companies, contractors — anybody who might be involved in that real estate transaction to get some money.

(03:58):

So, at the end of the day, there’s probably anywhere from five to 15 movements of money within the real estate transaction. And historically, we’re using checks to collect things like earnest money and using wires to disperse funds.

(04:12):

ACH has kind of been not the most liked term in the real estate sector. And the major reason for that is because of the clawback fraud protection that’s part of the ACH network. We use it and we’ve found that there’s really a misunderstanding of the ACH network in terms of fraud. It’s viewed as the consumers can have a bad hair day and they can ask for their money back and they’ll get it, no questions asked. And when we explain that, yes, there’s fraud protection, but it’s intended for true fraud, that there’s legal recourse to that, our customers seem to understand that, yes, this is a viable tool to use and there’s a place for ACH as well. So, that’s the general landscape of today.

Greg MacSweeney (04:55):

Got it. So, you mentioned wires, checks. It’s probably still the most common, is checks, I imagine. And you spoke a little bit about ACH there, and we’ll get into fraud in a bit too, but what are the different problems that arise to checks or wires or —

Bob Beams (05:14):

Yeah, whatever the payment —

Greg MacSweeney (05:15):

Whatever —

Bob Beams (05:16):

I would say in general —

Greg MacSweeney (05:17):

Livestock.

Bob Beams (05:18):

Livestock, I like it.

(05:20):

When it comes to checks, that the first problem is, does the customer have one? That’s why I started this business, is I asked a client for a check, they didn’t have it, and they had to go get a cashier’s check to provide their earnest money. And that was through that experience. And I went, “We need a better solution for this.”

(05:35):

So, in the banking world in general, we say checks aren’t going away. And that may be true on the business side of the world, but in the consumer space, not so much. Their expectation is to use the P2P (peer-to-peer) solutions to pay each other. Their expectation is to pay quickly and fast and be paid quickly and fast. So, we’re not able to meet that expectations with checks and wires.

(05:56):

So, when we have to deal with checks, we also have to deal with the amount of time it takes. So, if you’re talking about earnest money, usually what happens is the buyer and buyer’s agent, they go find the house, buyer goes home and thinks about it, they talk at 10 o’clock at night, they write the offer, they e-sign the contract, and then the next day, somebody’s got to get that check delivered to the trust account holder, who is going to hold it. And if it’s the agent, that could be the agent leaving their house, going to their buyer’s office, getting their check, they’re chatting for half an hour about the house and the process of buying the house, and then they got to get in their car, drive to the title company or to whoever’s holding that money, drop it off, and then go back to their day. So, that easily consumes two to three hours’ worth of time, where the consumer’s used to paying with the click of a button and being done.

(06:41):

Additionally, the title companies will use checks to pay, say, agent commission. And as a courtesy, they will get in a car and drive the check to this agent’s bank and deposit it for them, get a deposit slip, bring it back to their office, photocopy that receipt, put it into their ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, and then go about their day.

(06:59):

Now, that’s how it’s explained, but in reality, it doesn’t happen that fast. Checks get lost along the way. Receipts get lost along the way. And we’ve heard fun stories of when we talk about checks, that in one case, they were tearing down a building and they found a check from 30 years ago in between desks and they’re like, “Where did that check go?” Oh, there it is. So there’s all sorts of stories in that.

(07:22):

Then the other thing with fraud, is in the wire fraud side of things, buyers are targeted heavily in the real estate world. And the reason they’re targeted is because real estate agents’ information is all over the internet. So, the bad guys know who’s representing buyers and sellers. So, they target these real estate agents, and they target title companies, and they try to get into their emails, see what the communication is, and then send nefarious wire instructions to the consumer.

(07:50):

The consumer, when they’re going through a real estate transaction, they’re just walking the path. They’re following what their agent says. And so, when they get an email, it looks like it came from their agent or it came from the title company, that says, “We need to move money today or we can’t close in two weeks.” They don’t call and ask. They just take the wire instructions, go to their bank, and wire their money. And the reason it’s successful is because consumers don’t do wires every day. About the only time somebody does a wire is when they buy or sell a house, from a consumer side of things. So, that’s why wire fraud’s very, very successful.

(08:22):

Something else I would say is a problem with wires is you do have cutoff times. And so, if you are paying a seller’s loan off, they will have a payoff amount that’s good for a certain day. If you miss the wire cutoff for some reason, now you have to go to the next day. So, to keep that payoff amount, you have to pay a per diem, so there’s additional costs that come into it. So, those are some of the things that you run into.

Greg MacSweeney (08:47):

You mentioned fraud, and Ricky, I want to turn to you on the fraud topic as well. Are these rates of fraud increasing with wire payments in the real estate market? I know we’re seeing fraud in a lot of other payments rails kind of increase, and there’s a lot of hacking going on, spamming ...

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:09:04]

Greg MacSweeney (09:03):

... And there’s a lot of hacking going on, spamming, all of the frauds are out there trying to scam any kind of payments network. Are you seeing the fraud rates increase with wires?

Ricky (09:13):

So, from a wire perspective, you have a lot of those, the scams and maybe some things that you were talking about from an email compromise. So, at the end of the day, you’re going to have the whole know-who-you’re-paying scenario. That’s still going to be very, very important. One thing within the RTP space, it kind of gives you that end-to-end confirmation to be able to know who you’re paying, maybe while you’re on the phone at the exact same time with them. So, you do have some ability there to catch fraud out the gate? Again, we love that end-to-end confirmation. That speed of payment will also help overall stop any fraud from starting, along with your secure connection.

(09:57):

And I think we’ll get into that a little bit as we talk about just this overall secure network that RTP brings. When it comes to fraud, Bob was talking about check, right? That’s where you’re seeing the increased fraud within the industry. So, we definitely want to open up more opportunities away from check; RTP is just one of those solutions, but again, it’s going to be an enhancement adding on to this  quote, unquote fast payment, but RTP is going to be just that fast and a little bit more secure overall payment to help with those fraud constraints.

Greg MacSweeney (10:33):

Bob, does that line up what you’re seeing in terms of fraud increases?

Bob Beams (10:36):

Yeah, for sure. I think that I’m extremely excited about real-time payments from a fraud mitigation perspective, because what our customers can do is they can change their protocols. Right now, when you’re dealing with a wire, you originate a wire in anywhere from 20 minutes to the next day, that wire takes place. So, there’s the delay in time. So, if you get into real-time payments and you have a seller come into a title company’s office and sign their documents. In theory, before they hit the front door, their proceeds could be in their bank account, and they confirmed all that face to face, and they’re not leaving with a check that they have to go deposit that they could lose. So, from that perspective. The other side is if they aren’t there, then they can change their protocol to where the title company gets on the phone with their client and their agent, because their agent knows both parties, and they can confirm everybody’s the right people, confirm bank account information, hit send, and then the receiving party confirmed they received the money.

(11:36):

And then the last piece I would add to that is the request for payment. As that grows through the network, that it will be the major factor to mitigating traditional wire fraud, which is getting buyers to wire money to the wrong account, because now you have internal messaging from bank to bank that provides confidence to that consumer that that is the person who’s supposed to be receiving it. And then there’s warranties in there for fraud within the real-time payment network to help mitigate if fraud did happen. So, all I see are “ups” in terms of real-time payments in our space.

Greg MacSweeney (12:10):

We’ll dive into the RTP stuff in a little bit. Let’s take a little step back, though. Let me turn to Ricky about offering real-time payments on the RTP network. And you guys are doing it through KeyBank, EMTransfer is doing it through KeyBank. So, Ricky, what was involved with connecting EMTransfer to RTP and really, how are they connected to the network?

Ricky (12:28):

Yeah, absolutely. So, we mentioned APIs (application programming interfaces). So good old what, application program interfaces, maybe five to 10 years ago, if someone asked me what an API was, I would tell you, “I’m not really sure, sounds techy, sounds pretty fancy.” But we do have that capability now with KeyBank through EMTransfer, it kind of goes hand in hand with an instant payment. So, you create first this secure connection, which is a quick connection. So, EMTransfer gets to bank in a way when they want with their clients, right? There’s no cutoff time, there’s no nine to five. It’s a direct connection within their software. So that’s why we’ve gone the API route, because it fits the use case really well, especially in that real estate, right?Fedwire connection closes. Now you have this ability post wire  onnection, weekends, holidays directly through that API.

(13:26):

So, in terms of how we connected, I could talk about developer.key.com and the tech specs, but the connecting piece was a little bit more than that in how we approached the overall relationship. I’ll say KeyBank is a relationship bank. So, what did we do? We treated it as a one-on-one project. We’re on the phone, live working sessions with Bob and team to connect to our API. It wasn’t, “Hey, go take a look at this. Let us know how it works. Come back to us if you have any questions.” It was great live feedback. As we were building it, Bob was actually able to provide some good insight that we saw would work for real estate industry and other industries abroad. So that overall connecting piece, again, on paper, the tech is just a process, but we were really able to elaborate true working sessions to build off each other.

(14:21):

The security side of things, I’ll also say Key does a little bit more things that are more secure than any other API that’s not always consistent across the industry. And that’s one thing that Bob called out. Love the security, but we had to work hand in hand in that — what does this new process look like? We were able to get those partners to the table and walk through that was a key part of that connection overall. So that’s more of an industry recommendation, right? Make sure both sides are comfortable with the API, they understand the flows. And then after that, once it’s all on paper, the connecting piece is the easy part. It’s really just making sure that you’re both on the same page.

Greg MacSweeney (15:05):

Got it. Bob, can you talk about from your perspective, what was it like going through the API connection process and what you guys had to do to kind of, I guess, step up and get connected?

Bob Beams (15:14):

Make it work, yeah. As Ricky said, and we’ve had a great relationship with KeyBank all along. So, I’d say that’s the first thing that made the connection work, is having a great group of guys and people to work with here to put it together. And as Ricky said, when we got into just making the connection, the security protocols that we had to go through were much higher than what we’d seen elsewhere. It wasn’t just username, password, and it was some protocols that weren’t standard. And just to give you an example, you’re looking across Google for help and there wasn’t a lot of information out there, which isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion, because it’s a security protocol that’s very secure and isn’t necessarily utilized all the time. But once it’s in place and once we figured it out, it’s fantastic. And then as we went through the process of working with the APIs, doing some beta testing, seeing how it works, giving feedback, and having the team come back to us and go, “Yeah, that makes sense.

(16:13):

We’ll implement that.” And then they were implementing that and putting it into the sandbox very quickly, so we could test it and make sure it works. And then just to talk about from a speed perspective, once we had our arms wrapped around all the functionality and how we wanted to use it, the implementation within our platform really took about five business days. So, it wasn’t a heavy lift to do the implementation. And I’ll speak to across the board, this wasn’t just RTP, this was also utilizing wires, it was utilizing ACH so that the API was very flexible for us to implement, once we got our hands wrapped around it.

Greg MacSweeney (16:52):

So, Ricky, this was an API for electronic payments, is that what it was? So, wires, ACH, all of those, or is it specific to RTP?

Ricky (17:01):

So, we know that there’s multiple APIs in the industry, right? And it could get confusing on how many different ones you wanted to connect to. We wanted to keep it close to as similar as possible when you’re working with a different payment type. So, I’ll say that the foundation of the APIs stay pretty similar and then just tweaking a couple things based on the payment type would tweak some of the coding within the API itself. So, we wanted to create it, again, not having a brand-new API, just more of a couple field changes that you could use across our whole electronic payment ecosystem.

Greg MacSweeney (17:38):

Got it. OK. Let’s switch back to how EMT transfer is using RTP. And Bob, before you mentioned kind of the numerous different people in a typical real estate transaction — obviously, buyer, seller, agents, contractors, title insurance — many, many payments that most buyers and sellers don’t think about, right? All the fees going back and forth.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:18:04]

Greg MacSweeney (18:02):

So, you talked about the users. Where do you think RTP is going to make the most sense? Where are you going to see the most activity with those different types of users? Is it going to be buyers and sellers, or is it going to be more agents for closings? Is it going to be contractors? What do you think?

Bob Beams (18:15):

What I envision happening and how our platform works is, when it comes time to make a disbursement, we’re analyzing that routing number to determine what is available, what payment rails does that routing number receive? And so, what’s displayed to our trust account holders is, hey, this routing number, it can receive real-time payment, it can receive wire, it can receive ACH. Or it can only receive wire, or it can only receive ACH. So, now they know what methods are available and then they can choose. And by giving them that choice, and they not having to make that decision themself, because in a traditional online banking experience, they would. They would have to know, “Oh, I want to do a wire. Go to the wire page. I want to do an ACH. Go to the ACH page. Or I want to do RTP. Go to RTP page.”

(18:58):

So, by doing that determination for them of what’s available, now they can choose when it’s time to actually originate the transaction. And so, I envision that when RTP is the option of three options on the table, they’re going to choose RTP because they’re now more effective and complete in doing their work. And then this will — especially when it comes to things like paying off loans and not having to deal with cutoff times or trying to pay a real estate agent their commission at 5:00 on a Friday — they can do it now and they don’t have to deal with the check and running it across town.

(19:34):

And so, I feel as they get their hands wrapped around this, this will be the standard of choice over the other methods, because it’s a permanent transfer that happens instantly, and they can finish their work and not have to come back later and copy in confirmation codes into the ERP system when the deal’s done.

Ricky (19:55):

And Bob, I’ll add onto that, right, it’s kind your menu options, right? You’re providing all of those payment capabilities they get to choose. I think the RTP network and that instant payment is going to kind of lead the course over time as they get used to that, right? Right now, it’s just, they’re very content and they know check, they know ACH, they know wire. Once you experience an instant payment, you don’t want to go back, right? That’s kind of been the sentiment that we’re hearing so far. It’s just, they just haven’t seen it. It’s just so new.

(20:28):

But that’s kind of our approach as a bank too. We’re just providing the menu options, right? As a bank, we want to give you every payment option out there, we’re going to tell you the differences, and you’re going to kind of see what works best for you in that particular use case or your particular need.

Greg MacSweeney (20:44):

That’s really interesting, Ricky, because we see that as well at The Clearing House, and we’re talking to banks and credit unions about real-time payments and RTP. We can talk about it as much as we want and describe it, put it into slide decks and let them see it, but it’s until somebody experiences that first real-time payment, they’re like, “Oh wow, that is cool. I have my money right now or my client has their money right now.” And we see that with usage, we hear that from other clients about, or other banks’ clients about usage.

(21:16):

Once a consumer or a business finds RTP, they see it in their app or they see it in their digital wallet, they use that more times than not. They don’t switch back to an ACH transaction. They stay with RTP because it’s done, it’s right away, they got a confirmation, and they don’t have to worry about, “Well, will this be here tonight? Will it be here tomorrow? Will it be here on Tuesday, because Monday’s a bank holiday?” So, how are you working with — both of you, Ricky and Bob — how are you working to educate your clients about real-time payments? How do you kind of get across the value of it, and what seems to work and what doesn’t seem to work?

Bob Beams (21:57):

Yeah, I can go first on that. For me, it’s showing it to them, right? It’s going in and showing the process and showing a live demo, and it’s going, “Here, we’re going to send the seller the proceeds.” And talking to their use case. So, for example, in some states, they have what are called split closings. So, buyer gets a title, company seller gets a title company. They’re not the same title company. And so, what does that mean? Money comes into the buyer’s title company, and then the buyer’s title company has to send what’s left over to the seller’s title company to finish off the real estate transaction. That process right now is a phone communication, go back and forth, “Are the numbers all correct? And now we need to send a wire. Oh, we missed the cutoff, you’ll get it tomorrow.” Whereas, talking that scenario through going, “You can be on the phone, you can say, ‘Yep, we agree.’” Boom, send, they have it. Now they can finish their work. That affects their day, that affects how they do work, for the better. And so, when you speak to their use cases, that’s what resonates, from my side.

Ricky (22:59):

And from Key side, we’re at an exciting point right now, where we’ve been a receive bank for the last five years on the RTP network, right? And we can showcase that to an extent. It’s really cool and exciting to receive an RTP. But what Bob was kind of saying, now to be able to show the send side and the send benefits, we’re at that beginning stages of kind of starting our microphone, right? And that’s where I get excited from a product side of really pushing that out and explaining all the benefits from the send piece. We’re still new, we’re still pioneering that field. But again, that’s the exciting, that next step, the next wave in the ecosystem to send an actual, an RTP transaction.

Greg MacSweeney (23:43):

Excellent. So, I guess this is really the big question that I just kind of thought of as we’re discussing the real estate market and where everything is. So, in real estate, which is, as described, still paper-based, check based, is it ready for real-time payments?

Bob Beams (23:59):

Yes, it is. And the starting point is on the disbursement side. The hurdle that we’re going to have with real-time payments is regulatory. So, when receiving, when a title agency’s receiving funds, it has to pass a good-funds rule that they can use that money right away. Now we know real-time payment is a permanent good-funds transfer, its good funds from that perspective. But depending on each state’s regulations, it may or may not encompass that already. Some are very specific in saying it has to be a wire, where others are generic and say it has to be a good-funds transfer. Some states are modifying them. Utah just modified theirs and their legislation goes into effect in July, or excuse me, in June of this year.

(24:41):

So, it’s getting in front of the regulation for real-time payments, so that they can receive that and not have any audit issues with it. From a push perspective and sending money out from a settlement company, we haven’t seen any restrictions on that. They don’t restrict on what method they used to pay, even though goats aren’t used anymore. Kidding. They’re not restricted. They can use ACH, they can use wire, they can use checks. And so, real-time payment slots in there. So, starting out, there’s no restriction on that. And to speak to something that was said earlier is that, I think the early adopters can leverage this to win business, because if they can go to a real estate agent and say, “Look, we can pay you as soon as this thing’s done and you’ll have your money,” that speaks, right?

(25:27):

And as long as you’re a receiving real-time payment bank, you can get your money instantly as we’re going through this process, and you don’t have to deal with the check and all that kind of stuff. I think there’s the opportunity to win against your competitors because you’re doing something that they’re not doing.

Greg MacSweeney (25:42):

Are there states on your client base where you know that the good funds would apply to RTP and it’s fine, and there are other states where you’re going to run into, going to have to work through that regulatory process?

Bob Beams (25:55):

Yeah, it just depends on the state. Like I said, Utah, they jumped on it right away. I’m based in Idaho and I’m working with the trade organizations in that regard, to implement that and make sure that the state regulators are fine with it. I’ve looked at Washington State and it seems to be fine out of the gate. So, it really is a state-by-state basis on how they’ve drafted those terms.

Ricky (26:19):

And Bob, I’ll add to that, right, what makes the real estate industry ready is also going to be at companies like yourself, right? From a KeyBank perspective, we’re going to connect to the plumbing, right, and we are going to be the payments options. But what’s going to grow it is going to be these specialized application softwares within the industry that, say, that these companies are comfortable with, right? And they can do all of their real estate needs within there. “Oh, and I can do payments?” Well, that’s going to take you to the next stage, right? And then, KeyBank is just going to play one role in that to try to connect as many participants as possible. Again, just doing the plumbing, but from the industry standpoint, you’re growing that …

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:27:04]

Ricky (27:03):

. But from the industry standpoint, you’re growing that piece, right? You’re actually opening their eyes a little bit more than just a bank would, because you’re right within what they do on an everyday basis.

Greg MacSweeney (27:12):

Great point. So, is there anything we missed in this discussion today? Anything we didn’t cover when it comes to real-time payments in the real estate space?

Bob Beams (27:20):

For me, I would say that the main thing is just having people jump on and start using it. So, we get that feedback sometimes where people are like, “Oh, when everybody’s using it, we’ll use it.” And so, what I tell folks is, “Why not be the first? Because if you use it, then it’ll be used, and your competitors will want it, your banks will want it, your banks will give it to you, so on and so forth.” Because in the landscape of real estate, the title companies like to do business with the banks they want to do business with. So, those banks have to adapt and adopt this technology as well if they don’t have it already. And so, what’s going to drive that is usage. So that’s what we’re promoting to our clients, is get on it. Get on it with one bank that has it, start using it, that will promote the growth. That will get us to the point where request for payment is mature through the network, which will get us to the place where we can make impacts in things like wire fraud because of utilizing these tools. And not to be scared of this, just wrap your arms around it and move forward.

Ricky (28:25):

And from a KeyBank perspective, we’re here to grow the network, grow the industry. So from a non-banking industry side, ask your bank about it, kind of what Bob said, be the ones pushing it forward. Definitely love you to ask KeyBank about it, but just ask your bank and where are they getting involved? And then understand how is that going to help you? Just kind of be informed that a real-time payment is here, it’s not going away, and it’s supposed to benefit you. So, just get as much knowledge around it as you can and ask your bank about instant payments.

Greg MacSweeney (29:04):

Great. So those are all the questions that I have right now, but before I do let you go, we do have a tradition on this show where we like to ask our guests what makes them a payments nerd? After all, this is the “Payments Nerd” podcast. So, I’ll ask both of you, and Ricky, you go first. What makes you a payments nerd?

Ricky (29:21):

What makes me a payments nerd? So, my son recently turned 1 years old and I can’t think about him using a check, ever. So, I hope that he just lives in a world that is instant payments only, and that’s kind of all he knows. The fact that I even think about that, if that’s cool, that probably makes me a payments nerd, because some people are waiting for their kid to walk and I’m like, “Oh, I wonder what kind of payments he’s going to use in 20 years.” So, that would put me in the payment nerd category.

Greg MacSweeney (29:53):

That’s pretty funny. Yeah, I would say that’s true. You’re a payments nerd. What about you, Bob?

Bob Beams (29:59):

Well, if you asked my daughter, she’d say it’s because I like the candy, Nerds. But I would say from my side, what has made me a payment nerd is, I didn’t ever envision being in this sector of the world, right? I joined this sector of the world because I was trying to solve a problem that I had. And what’s come of that is it’s exciting to see change. It’s exciting to visualize, and you can see what impact this is going to make as it rolls out. And so, being a part of that is very exciting and it gets us very nerdy. Ricky and I, we can laugh about this. The first time we did a live-production real-time payment, we both were nerding out. We’re like, “This is so cool.” So, it’s exciting, and that’s what makes you nerd out about it.

Greg MacSweeney (30:53):

That’s pretty cool. Well said, guys. So, while on behalf of The Clearing House and our guest today, Bob from EMTransfer, and Ricky from KeyBank, I’d like to thank everybody for attending and tuning into this podcast. And if you enjoy today’s episode and you want to hear more about payments, you can find the “Payments Nerd” podcast on the podcast page at clearinghouse.org. Or you can find “Payments Nerds” where you subscribe to your podcasts. Simply search for “Payments Nerds” in your podcast app. Thank you and have a great day.

Speaker 2 (31:21):

The Clearing House is full of payments nerds who just can’t wait to tell you about how the RTP network helps U.S. financial institutions create a faster and smarter experience for their corporate and retail customers. Check out the schedule for online and in-person events at theclearinghouse.org.

Speaker 1 (31:40):

You’ve been listening to “Payments Nerds.” To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:32:02]