The benefits of Open APIs and RTP for merchants

very good call for the future 

incentives could be added to entice downside to consumer and offset the disadvantage 

The combination of instant payments and open banking / PSD2 will definitely shift the business from cards to instant rails. The biggest advantage for mecharts will be savings from bypassing card fees and immediate availability of liquidity.  

I agree entirely with @Aniruddha. Even after the Interchange Fee Regulation, merchants are fed up paying new and extortionate fees to the main card companies which has almost wiped out any savings they may have initially derived from the Regulation itself. They are deperate to find cheaper alternatives that they can incentivise consumers to use and attach their own loyalty programs to. Good luck to them I say!

RTP has been around for nearly 10 years in the form of Faster Payments but card is still the most popular cashless payment. Merchants can only dream. It's really the actions of banks and consumers that will decide whether Open Banking / RTP will overtake card payments. Banks by virtue of the control they exercise over the account authorization journey by Open Banking PISPs. Per Open Banking in the UK; a disaster in the making?, there's so much friction in the authorization journey that there isn't a single PISP that uses API access. Coming to customers, they get deferred payment, reward points and fraud protection when they pay with card. They don't get these benefits with OB / RTP. What's their compelling reason to switch to an OB / RTP payment (if and when one is available)?