Each year, The Clearing House Annual Conference brings together senior leaders from the world’s largest banks, regulators and policymakers to discuss the biggest trends shaping the banking and payments ecosystem: from regulation and technology to risk and real-time rails.

Ahead of the 2025 event in New York November 4–5, The FR spoke with Elena Casal, chief client officer, about what’s driving the agenda this year.

What can we expect at the 2025 TCH Annual Conference?

The Clearing House Annual Conference is a two-day event focused on the most important issues facing leading financial institutions. Each year, we assemble a diverse group of executives, policymakers and academics to discuss key issues related to the regulatory environment and the ever-changing payments landscape. From significant shifts in payments technology to the evolving regulatory and economic landscape, the program will focus on the opportunities and challenges for financial institutions in 2026 and beyond.

Our keynote speakers are:

Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency
Michael Biebach, CEO of Mastercard
Gunjan Kedia, CEO of U.S. Bancorp
Robin Vince, CEO of BNY
Charles W. Scharf, CEO and President of Wells Fargo & Company

We’re also excited to host a conversation between Eli Manning, two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback and two-time Super Bowl MVP, and Trish Devine, global head of corporate sales at J.P. Morgan Payments, who will discuss how payments has evolved in the past few years, how customer expectations are changing, and where the industry is headed.

What is the target audience for the TCH Annual Conference, and what do you aim to achieve this year?

We look forward to welcoming C-Suite industry executives, policymakers and leading experts to the Annual Conference who are interested in discussing top issues facing the payments and financial services industry. At last year’s conference, we had more than 600 attendees from leading financial institutions, technology companies, regulatory agencies and professional services firms.

This year’s program features two discussion tracks: one focused on emerging business and payments trends, and the other on key policy issues. We’ve invited over 100 speakers from financial services, government, and professional services to explore timely trends in our industry.

We designed the conference to foster a thoughtful dialogue on the industry's most pressing challenges and opportunities, charting a clear path for its future. Attendees will leave with actionable insights into the latest industry trends, emerging technology and the policy outlook to benefit their organizations.

What key developments are shaping the payments landscape today?

The past year in the payments world has been very exciting and fast-moving, with tech advancements, policy updates, shifting corporate priorities, and more. We’re excited to dig into some of these themes at the Annual Conference, including:

How instant payments have evolved to meet consumer demands and corporate pressure points
The future of digital assets as U.S. regulatory framework unfolds, and how this new framework will co-exist with traditional payment rails
How companies are leveraging client data for stronger, more personalized customer experiences
The current opportunities and challenges of AI in financial services
Addressing AML and national security issues in U.S. banking
Navigating the evolving landscape of lending for banks and private credit

What's the next stage of growth for instant payments moving into 2026?

The volume of real-time payments has been growing rapidly year over year, which we expect to continue into 2026.

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The RTP network currently processes over 1.3 million payments per day, valued at over $4 billion each day, and just marked a new single-day record on October 3 of 1.8 million payments valued at over $5 billion. These payments enable real-time payroll for gig workers, faster settlement for small businesses, immediate transfers for consumers managing finances across accounts, and dozens of other use cases. We anticipate that new and innovative use cases will emerge alongside some of the most popular ones, supported by various functionalities such as Request for Payment (RfP) and DDA tokenization. Overall, the future of instant payments will be driven by technology – from enhanced security, to APIs that expand capabilities, to infrastructure upgrades.

At The Clearing House, we are in a unique and valuable position that brings together financial institutions to foster collaborative innovation, solve real-world problems, and better the industry and economy. It’s a position that we don’t take lightly, and we’re looking forward to defining and supporting this next era of payments.