The Clearing House nabs top Fed official

Dive Brief:

The Clearing House has hired Keith Melton from the Federal Reserve as a new senior vice president, the bank-owned company said Monday in a press release. Melton will also act as strategic program manager for the company’s real-time payments business called RTP.
Melton, 49, will be responsible for executing the next phase of The Clearing House’s instant payment strategy and working closely with The Clearing House’s clients to accelerate RTP adoption, the release said. He will report to Margaret Weichert, The Clearing House’s chief product officer.
Melton “will drive execution of the next phase of TCH’s instant payments strategy and, in particular, the growth of the RTP network, strengthening its position as the instant payments leader in the United States,” the release said.

Dive Insight:

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Melton was a senior vice president heading up product management at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta within the Federal Reserve Financial Services division. He joined the Fed in 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that move, he held roles at IBM and SunTrust Bank, according to the announcement.

The Clearing House continues to shake up its leadership as it promotes use of the real-time payments network. Earlier this year, the company hired Sheffali Welch as its new chief operating officer and Weichert as its chief product officer, the release said.

“I’m happy to bring my experience with innovation, product management and execution to The Clearing House to focus on opportunities to continue to grow the RTP network ecosystem, including many opportunities with partners and technology providers,” Melton said in the release.

Melton is taking the post as competition between The Clearing House’s RTP network and the Fed’s new FedNow instant payments system heats up. Soon after FedNow began operating on July 20, The Clearing House touted the RTP network as having processed 500 million payments as of that month, since its inception in 2017. It also noted that 150,000 American businesses had used RTP.

Earlier this month, Jack Henry & Associates announced that it had lured 40 clients into the FedNow system and has another 150 customers in some state of seeking to implement it.

As RTP and FedNow vie for customers, consumers are increasingly turning away from cash and toward digital payments. Global electronic payment transaction volumes increased by 17% over the past five years, according to a McKinsey report released in September.