The Clearing House
U.S. Bank-Owned Payments Company and Banking Association
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Clearing House, established in 1853 as the New York Clearing House, is the oldest banking association and payments operator in the United States. Its infrastructure clears and settles automated clearing house (ACH) transactions, wire transfers, instant payments, and check images. Serving a broad range of financial institutions, The Clearing House delivers secure, efficient, and modern systems that are integral to the U.S. payments industry.
President and Chief Executive Officer
| |
| Type | Private-sector, not-for-profit banking association and payments network operator |
|---|---|
| Founded | October 4, 1853 |
| Headquarters | New York City, U.S. |
| Key People | David Watson President and Chief Executive Officer |
| Services | Wire transfers Instant payments ACH Check image exchange services |
| Owner banks | 25 |
| Founding Banks | JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bank of America Corp. Citigroup Inc. BNY, Deutsche Bank AG U.S. Bancorp Wells Fargo & Co. |
| Website | https://www.theclearinghouse.org |
Brief Summary
The Clearing House, founded in 1853, is the oldest banking association and payments operator in the United States, which functioned as the nation's central bank until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1914. The Clearing House operates U.S-based payments networks that clear and settle more than $2 trillion every business day for financial institutions through instant payments, wire, ACH, and image exchange.[1]
The Clearing House's mission is to provide safe, reliable, and efficient payment systems and shape the payments landscape by driving the adoption of modern payment solutions advancing education and collaborating with industry partners.
Advocacy, Policy, and Industry Leadership
In addition to its role as a payments operator, The Clearing House runs The Clearing House Association, L.L.C., a nonpartisan banking advocacy organization and the country's oldest banking trade association. It provides informed advocacy and thought leadership on critical payments-related issues.
Core Services and Payments Networks
As the only private-sector payments clearing and settlement operator in the country, The Clearing House has over 170 years of experience providing safe, reliable, and modern payments infrastructure in the United States.
Today, The Clearing House operates several major U.S. payments systems built for a mix of payments needs, including instant payments through the RTP® network, wire transactions through the high-value CHIPS® network, high-volume and non-urgent ACH batch payment processing via the EPN® network, and image exchange services via the SVPCO® network.
The RTP Network
In November 2017, The Clearing House launched the RTP network,[2] the first instant-payments rail in the U.S. that enables real-time clearing and settlement of domestic payments. The RTP network provides the clients of financial institutions of all sizes instant payment confirmation, 24/7/365 availability, and deposit growth, which help banks and their customers reduce costs, mitigate risk, improve liquidity management, meet customer expectations, and compete more effectively in a real-time financial world. On average, the network processes 1.3 million instant payments per day[3] and currently clears and settles 98% of all instant-payment transactions in the United States.[4]
The RTP network offers financial institutions, including credit unions and community banks, safer and modern payment solutions, immediate settlement of payments, and data-rich messaging. Businesses and consumers send payments via the network for a wide range of use cases, including account-to-account, person-to-person, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer transactions.
Since its launch, the RTP network has handled over one billion payments.[5] Over 340,000 businesses[4] and 7.5 million consumers send payments through the RTP network every month.
The CHIPS Network
Through the CHIPS network, The Clearing House provides financial institutions with a high-value wire-transfer platform that nets, clears, and settles $2 trillion every business day.[6]
The Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) network, a systemically important financial market utility, uses a patented liquidity-netting algorithm that enables banks to settle payments with less intraday funding than traditional real-time gross settlement systems, lowering funding costs, reducing risk, and improving operational efficiency.
With its multilateral netting capabilities, the CHIPS network provides intraday settlement finality and liquidity savings to financial institutions. The liquidity efficiency of the CHIPS network averaged 26:1 in 2025, meaning that $1 contributed to the network in funding supported more than $26 in settled value.[7] Additionally, the CHIPS network gives participants greater control over the timing and release of their payments, further enhancing its appeal among users seeking efficiency and flexibility in their payment operations.
The EPN Network
The Clearing House's ACH rail, known as the EPN network, is dedicated to safely and efficiently providing recurrent, batch-based electronic fund transfers for financial institutions of all sizes. These payments are typically not time-critical, where speed is less important than reliability, scale, and low cost. As one of the two ACH network operators in the U.S., The Clearing House handles approximately 62% of all U.S. ACH traffic. The EPN network interoperates with the Federal Reserve's ACH network, which means that EPN participants can send ACH transactions to essentially all financial institutions in the United States.
The EPN network clears and settles an average of 86 million ACH transactions daily,[8] including payroll, vendor payments, electronic checks, and more. In 2025, the EPN system processed 21.5 billion transactions worth $60.3 trillion.[8]
Image Exchange Network
The Image Exchange Network (SVPCO) from The Clearing House is an industry utility that allows financial institutions of all sizes to exchange check images efficiently and cost-effectively. The network clears 29% of the market share throughout the U.S.
Technology & Security
The Clearing House's CHIPS and RTP networks support the ISO 20022 messaging standard, ensuring compatibility and efficiency across global payment networks. The ISO 20022 message is the international standard for financial messaging developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) with the goal to create a common language for financial communications globally.
The Clearing House is working to expand the adoption of the ISO 20022 message standard among financial institutions and their clients to take advantage of the networks’ ability to carry richer and more detailed data about payments.
Security is a top priority for The Clearing House, which utilizes measures such as multilayer encryption and tokenization to protect sensitive data.
The Clearing House is exploring expanded adoption of its DDA token service[9] to safeguard bank account numbers and help mitigate risks associated with fraud and data breaches across the financial ecosystem.
Regulation & Supervision
The Clearing House is subject to robust regulation and supervision by the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
History
| Years | Event |
|---|---|
| 1853 | The Clearing House was established by New York City banks to streamline interbank settlement. |
| 1870–1900 | The Clearing House introduced group netting of checks and evolved into a national clearing network. |
| 1907–1970 | The Clearing House provided secure and reliable services for Americans during momentous stock market shifts, such as the 1907 stock market crash, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The strength of Clearing House member banks was evident during the Great Depression, when only one Clearing House member was closed at a time (1930–1933) during which one third of all U.S. banks failed. During World War II, The Clearing House actively promoted the sale of bonds to support the nation's war effort. |
| 1970–1975 | The Clearing House launched the CHIPS and New York Automated Clearing House (NYACH, later renamed EPN) networks. |
| 2017 | The Clearing House launched the RTP network, the first U.S. instant-payment rail for bank-to-bank payments. |
| 2024 | The CHIPS network successfully migrated to the ISO 20022 message format. |
| 2025 | The RTP network raised its transaction limit to $10 million. |