Pathward and Dash Solutions Debut Real-Time Payments Tool

Banking-as-a-service firm Pathward and payments company Dash Solutions are giving their partnership another five years.

And with that extended partnership, the companies announced in a news release Wednesday (Aug. 2), comes a new tool: SpendIT SendIT, which lets consumer payees use or move their funds to other accounts they own.

“Together, we are tapping into an unmet need in embedded finance that few banks and payments providers have been able to solve for, and the solution aims to deliver swift disbursement and access to funds,” Pathward President Anthony Sharett said.

“As a testament to the strength of our partnership over the past five years, we are addressing an immense market need among some of the largest payers in the U.S. — delivering a frictionless disbursement process that’s less stressful for consumers and for businesses,” added Stephen Faust, Dash Solution’s chief executive.

According to the release, SpendIT SendIT offers real-time delivery of various payment types and offers flexible access for consumers to spend or send the money they receive. The companies say they are working to address growing consumer demand for real-time payments.

And that demand is there because consumers have become used to instant gratification,

Miyoshi Lee, head of U.S. real-time payments at Bank of America, told PYMNTS in an interview last month.

As that report noted, real-time is nothing new, stretching back to the launch of the RTP® network in 2017. And since then, Lee said, the move toward faster payments has been market-driven.

“We’ve allowed the U.S. real-time payments market to just evolve naturally based on basic supply and demand and client expectations,” Lee said. FinTechs — those often digital-only upstarts that have filled in the gaps of innovation in financial services — deserve credit for helping birth the real-time market.

“But in order for this space to really take off,” Lee said, “we’ve needed the safety and the trust of the banking world, in order for most corporations to really sit up and pay attention.”

Meanwhile, the market for real-time payments is taking off worldwide, PYMNTS wrote recently, with initiatives underway from Sweden to South Africa to South Korea.

Pathward’s partnership with Dash Solutions follows June’s announcement that the company had partnered with Propel to introduce new lines of credit.

As PYMNTS reported, the new line of credit lets customers access a flexible line of credit, move the funds to their core spending account and only pay interest only on the drawn amount.