Banking association The Clearing House Association (TCH) has selected British payment infrastructure operator VocaLink to develop a national real-time payment service in the US.

VocaLink said it has commenced work to ensure the system is built rapidly.

TCH and its member banks announced plans to build a real-time payment system in October 2014.

In addition to the work TCH commissioned VocaLink to complete, individual financial institutions and their service providers have already commenced efforts to integrate and adopt the new real-time payment system, TCH and VocaLink said in a joint statement.

Once complete, the system will empower US consumers and businesses to send and receive real-time payments from their existing accounts at financial institutions.

It will also offer a platform to launch new services such as new message capabilities for financial services that go well beyond basic payments.

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The system will comply with global standards (ISO 20022) for real-time payments to promote international interoperability and help ease cross-border commerce.

TCH president and CEO James Aramanda said: "Finalizing this partnership with VocaLink represents a significant milestone in our effort to make ubiquitous real-time payments a reality in the US.

"Once completed, customers will pay or receive money in real-time from any financial institution, and with its innovative extensible design the system will be built to provide the basis for payment solutions currently unimagined."

VocaLink CEO David Yates said: "This is an important deal for VocaLink and an important deal for the UK. The U.S. is the largest global payments market and to win this deal boosts the UK’s credentials as a global leader in payments technology.

"We look forward to working with such a respected and impressive partner as The Clearing House to deliver a service that will transform US payments."

The Clearing House is the only private sector ACH and wire operator in the US, processing approximately 50% of all commercial ACH and wire volume in the US. Its customers include credit unions and commercial banks.