Immediate payment systems make payments within a few second which are cleared the same day, and mostly operate 23/7or 24/7. They are being launched world-wide to support retail e-commerce. Not only, consumers are using these systems, businesses are latching onto these systems too, e.g. UK's FasterPayments.

Currently, there are immediate payment systems in: South Africa, Mexico, UK, Poland, Nigeria. Singapore, Sweden and Australia plan to implement immediate payment systems later this year or next year. Furthermore, in the USA a consortium of Bank of America (BofA), Wells Fargo and potentially J.P. Morgan Chase has launched ClearXchange, which will jointly allow millions of their customers to transact person-to-person (P2P) payments without having to exchange account numbers.

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The rapid emergence of low cost immediate / same-day payment systems for e-commerce is changing the very nature of collecting payments not just for consumer payments on the Internet and payments via mobile, but also for B2B payments. Bill collection and accounts receivable systems will need major upgrades to take advantage of these new payment systems.