Grassroots ADVOCACY POLICY EXPERTS MEMBER ENGAGEMENT WASHINGTON WATCH Real-time, for real Private and public initiatives bring faster payments to life. By Cary Whaley A s the United States gets ever closer to making real-time payments a financial services industry reality, community banks have been an instrumental part of the process every step of the way. With the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House (TCH) and NACHA advancing critical faster-payments initiatives, ICBA community bankers have worked closely with these and other public- and private-sector partners to ensure they meet the needs of community banks and their customers. Private-sector collaboration TCH recently launched the first new payments infrastructure in the United States in more than 40 years with its real-time payments system, RTP. Under the RTP system, which fulfills the criteria established by the Federal Reserve Faster Payments independentbanker.org ICBA Independent Banker 29 PHOTO: ANDY ROUSE/GETTY IMAGEShttp://www.independentbanker.org