The Clearing House (RTP)

The Clearing House (TCH) is a U.S. banking association and payments company owned by many of the largest commercial banks. It operates three core payment systems: CHIPS (large-value wire clearing), the EPN automated clearing house (ACH), and the RTP network, the private-sector real-time payments rail it launched in 2017 as the first new U.S. payments infrastructure in decades. RTP is a 24/7/365 instant-payments scheme built on the ISO 20022 messaging standard, supporting immediate credit-push transfers up to $10 million with final settlement, plus Request for Payment (RfP), remittance data, and a UID addressing/directory lookup. TCH is the scheme operator for the U.S. market and competes with the Federal Reserve's FedNow service. Its API posture is documentation- and rulebook-first: TCH does not publish an open, self-serve public REST API or downloadable OpenAPI/Swagger specification. Instead it publishes ISO 20022 message specifications (pacs, pain, camt, remt) as PDFs, the RTP network operating rules, playbooks, and a technology-provider program. Real-time HTTP/JSON RTP APIs are surfaced to businesses by participating financial institutions (for example U.S. Bank) and registered technology providers that connect to the RTP network on their behalf.

The Clearing House (RTP) is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Payments, United States, Real-Time Payments, Instant Payments, and ISO 20022.

The Clearing House (RTP)’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, engineering blog, and 6 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

13.1/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Front door AI 1/6 silent saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

1 API

Payments United States Real-Time Payments Instant Payments ISO 20022 Account-to-AccountPayment RailsScheme Operator Request for Payment

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

Composite quality — 13.1/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 2.8 / 17

Access Clarity 1.8 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 11

Contract Governance 1.9 / 10

Discoverability 5.5 / 9

Regulatory Posture 2.0 / 15

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Payments regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/the-clearing-house: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
US Open Banking (FDX)	standard	17.2 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

ISO 20022

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

RTP Network (ISO 20022 Messaging)

The RTP network is The Clearing House's real-time payments scheme for the United States, moving credit-push payments instantly, 24/7/365, with final settlement up to $10 million...

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

The Clearing House Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conformance

Conformance

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: the-clearing-house
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/the-clearing-house/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: The Clearing House (RTP)
kind: company
description: 'The Clearing House (TCH) is a U.S. banking association and payments company owned by many of the largest commercial
  banks. It operates three core payment systems: CHIPS (large-value wire clearing), the EPN automated clearing house (ACH),
  and the RTP network, the private-sector real-time payments rail it launched in 2017 as the first new U.S. payments infrastructure
  in decades. RTP is a 24/7/365 instant-payments scheme built on the ISO 20022 messaging standard, supporting immediate credit-push
  transfers up to $10 million with final settlement, plus Request for Payment (RfP), remittance data, and a UID addressing/directory
  lookup. TCH is the scheme operator for the U.S. market and competes with the Federal Reserve''s FedNow service. Its API
  posture is documentation- and rulebook-first: TCH does not publish an open, self-serve public REST API or downloadable OpenAPI/Swagger
  specification. Instead it publishes ISO 20022 message specifications (pacs, pain, camt, remt) as PDFs, the RTP network operating
  rules, playbooks, and a technology-provider program. Real-time HTTP/JSON RTP APIs are surfaced to businesses by participating
  financial institutions (for example U.S. Bank) and registered technology providers that connect to the RTP network on their
  behalf.'
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - security
  generated: '2026-09-02'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
- Payments
- United States
- Real-Time Payments
- Instant Payments
- ISO 20022
- Account-to-Account
- Payment Rails
- Scheme Operator
- Request for Payment
created: '2026-07-24'
modified: '2026-07-24'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: the-clearing-house:rtp-network
  name: RTP Network (ISO 20022 Messaging)
  description: 'The RTP network is The Clearing House''s real-time payments scheme for the United States, moving credit-push
    payments instantly, 24/7/365, with final settlement up to $10 million per transaction. It is defined by published ISO
    20022 message specifications rather than an open self-serve REST API: Credit Transfer (pacs.008), Message Status Report
    (pacs.002), Request for Payment (pain.013/pain.014), Request for Information (camt.026/camt.028), Request for Return of
    Funds (camt.056/camt.029), Payment Acknowledgement (camt.035), Stand-Alone Remittance Advice (remt.001), and the Business
    Application Header (BAH). Access is via participating financial institutions and registered technology providers; no downloadable
    OpenAPI is published by TCH.'
  humanURL: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/technical-documentation
  tags:
  - Real-Time Payments
  - ISO 20022
  - Instant Payments
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/technical-documentation
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/document-library
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/rtp-network-operating-rules
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/technical-documentation
- type: APIReference
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp/document-library
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/newsroom
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/terms-of-use
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.theclearinghouse.org/privacy-policy
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/the-clearing-house-domain-security.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/the-clearing-house-conformance.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/the-clearing-house-llms.txt
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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