Sionic has launched Instant Bank Pay on Microsoft Marketplace, a real-time bank-to-bank payment service for U.S. commerce that moves money from checking accounts within seconds and costs an average 60% less than credit and debit cards.
The service fills three gaps Sionic discovered during a late-2024 proof of concept—an alias directory, fraud detection for point-of-sale use, and payment dispute handling—leveraging Microsoft Foundry and the FedNow and RTP networks through banking partners.
What happened
Sionic announced the availability of its Instant Bank Pay service and Fraud Detection Service on Microsoft Marketplace. The service enables real-time, bank-to-bank payments at the point of sale using the FedNow® Service and RTP® network through banking partners, moving cash digitally within seconds from payers' checking accounts to payees' accounts.
Why it matters
The service delivers an average 60% savings over credit and debit cards for transactions, and Sionic used Microsoft Foundry to solve three critical gaps in bank-to-bank commerce: building an alias directory (like Zelle), adding fraud detection for point-of-sale transactions, and enabling payment dispute support. For merchants and businesses, this means lower payment processing costs; for financial institutions, it expands real-time payment infrastructure.
What to watch
Sionic began a pay-by-bank proof of concept in late 2024 and is now distributing through Microsoft Marketplace, where customers can discover and deploy the service with integration into Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft products. Payers receive instant Perks when paying with their checking accounts at participating merchants.
Sionic, described as a leader in real-time, bank-to-bank payments at the point of sale, announced on August 12, 2026, the launch of its Instant Bank Pay service and Fraud Detection Service on Microsoft Marketplace. Microsoft Marketplace is Microsoft's unified online destination for customers to discover and purchase cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents.
The Instant Bank Pay service moves cash digitally within seconds directly from a payer's checking account to a payee's account, using the FedNow® Service and the RTP® network through banking partners. Transactions cost an average 60% less than credit and debit card payments. Payers earn instant Perks when they pay with their checking accounts at participating merchants and businesses.
Sionic's path to this product began in late 2024 with a pay-by-bank proof of concept. During that work, the company discovered three critical components missing from existing bank payment rails: no alias directory comparable to Zelle (which lets users identify recipients by phone number or email rather than account details), no fraud detection designed specifically for point-of-sale transactions, and no system for handling payment disputes. To address these gaps, Sionic used Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft's data and AI platform. The dispute resolution mechanism uses an AI agent to negotiate refunds between a customer's agent and a seller's agent, bypassing the financial institution unless escalation is needed.
Nick Stanescu, executive vice president and chief FedNow executive at the Federal Reserve, said: "Organizations like Sionic are helping advance U.S. payments with solutions that foster innovation while expanding the value and reach of the FedNow Service." Ronald Herman, Sionic's founder and CEO, stated: "Sixteen years ago, we set out to build the future of low-cost payments in America. Today, that future is here. Instant Bank Pay is the real-time, bank-to-bank payment service for commerce in the U.S. Using Microsoft Foundry has helped us bring it to merchants, businesses, and financial institutions." Cyril Belikoff, vice president of Microsoft Azure Product Marketing, added: "We're pleased to welcome Sionic to Microsoft Marketplace. Marketplace connects trusted solutions from global partners with customers worldwide, making it easy to find and deploy apps that work seamlessly with Microsoft products."
Sionic's announcement reflects a broader push to modernize U.S. payment infrastructure around instant, bank-to-bank settlement. The company's late-2024 proof of concept exposed a real problem: the FedNow Service and RTP network, while technically capable of moving money in seconds, lacked the commercial layer—alias management, fraud controls, dispute handling—that merchants and consumers expect from payment systems. By partnering with Microsoft and using Foundry (Microsoft's data and AI platform), Sionic was able to add these missing pieces without building them in isolation.
The availability through Microsoft Marketplace is a distribution play. It gives Sionic access to Microsoft's existing customer base—Azure users, enterprises buying cloud solutions—while providing those customers a pre-integrated payment option. The 60% cost savings over card networks is the headline benefit, but the real shift is structural: money moves directly between bank accounts in real time, with AI handling disputes and an alias system enabling frictionless lookups. This is materially different from card networks, which route payments through intermediaries and clear over hours or days.
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