Overview

Instant Payments are transactions that can be initiated, cleared, and posted to a customer’s account at any time—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These payments are processed in near real time through a centralized network, enabling immediate availability of funds.

Newline’s Instant Payments solution currently supports two payment networks within a unified platform. It facilitates the sending of transactions through:

The Clearing House (TCH) RTP® network, and
FedNow®, the instant payment service operated by the Federal Reserve.

Receiving Bank Eligibility

Instant Payments are supported by a growing number of participating banks and financial institutions. Newline will verify the eligibility of a bank or financial institution before creating a counterparty and prior to processing any Customer payment. We recommend that Customer confirm whether their selected counterparty is able to receive Instant Payments.

Participating Financial Institutions:

The Clearing House: TCH RTP Network Participating Financial Institutions
The Federal Reserve: FedNow Participating Financial Institutions

Constraints

There are certain constraints any Customer should be aware of before choosing Instant Payments in order to mitigate downstream errors or payment failures.

Account Funding

Sufficient available funds must be present in your source Synthetic Account when you submit an Instant Payments credit transfer. Newline will debit the funds from your account during the credit origination process. If sufficient available funds are not present, the credit transfer will be rejected.

Transaction Limits

Send Limit: $1,000,000
Receive Limit: $10,000,000

US Based Payments

Payments must be originated and received within the domestic U.S.

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Note
If you are using a non-instant payment to fund your disbursement account, such as a Wire or ACH, please remember that these will not process after cutoff times, on weekends or on bank holidays. Please ensure you have appropriate funding in your account to cover these time periods when credit of funds via these methods is not possible.

Reject Codes and Descriptions

An Instant Payment may be rejected by Newline, RTP® or FedNow ® for a number of reasons. In the event of a rejection, the Instant Payment will fail. Newline will return ERR codes (see  API Errors for the codes and descriptions). If you need further assistance resolving an error, please reach out to your Newline Specialist for more information.

Network Operating Rules

Originators are required to comply with both the RTP® Network Operating Rules and Guidelines and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow® Operating Rules and Guidelines.

Environment Support

Newline provides both production and testing environments to support the full lifecycle of Instant Payments integration—from development to deployment.

Production

The production environment is used for live transactions and is subject to scheduled maintenance windows.

Weekly Maintenance Window: Every Sunday from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. ET. Please note, for transactions sent and received through the RTP® network, other participants may go offline for maintenance between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Service Behavior During Maintenance: If the Fifth Third system is undergoing maintenance, payment requests will return an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable error. See API Errors for the more information.

Testing

Newline can simulate received and originated instant payments in the sandbox environment to prepare clients for production.

Maintenance Schedule: There is no fixed maintenance schedule for the sandbox environment. Updates and changes may occur periodically and without prior notice. While we strive to minimize disruption, occasional downtime may be experienced during these updates.
Testing Resources: