Your Guide To The Real Estate Payments Revolution
Progress is never easy or fast, but the rewards are well-worth the effort (and patience)! With the advent of new inventions, innovations and technology, we are continuously improving the quality of our lives and the freedoms we enjoy – both in our personal and business lives, which are inextricably intertwined.
Did you know that the audio-visual technology that makes it possible for families and friends to stay in touch across the globe, as well as the video-conferencing platforms that enable employees to work at home while remotely collaborating, took root from an idea to transmit images and audio over wire that was conceived by Bell Labs in the 1870s? Step by step, that idea became a reality over time, eventually giving rise to the smartphones and smartphone apps with video conferencing in the 2000’s, and then given a catalytic push in 2020 by the Coronavirus pandemic and the need for videoconferencing to allow workers to safely isolate while still conducting business remotely.
Similar to the evolution of videoconferencing, the development of the U.S. money rails has had a profound effect on the way we live and do business. I remember my mother saying how she thought the invention of the credit card was life-changing during her youth! In the U.S., the financial system has been relatively slow to evolve, but within the last 10 years it has picked up speed and there have been some amazing technological advances, such as Real Time Payments (RTP) and FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s version of RTP, which is on the cusp of being publicly rolled out. These newer payment rails, along with the convenience of modern payment methods – like PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay and others – hold great promise for transforming the real estate and title insurance industries, and we want to share some special insights with you.
If you’d like to see where we’ve come from, and get a good idea of where we may be headed, then be sure to read the white paper, “Moving Money in a Real Estate Transaction.”