1. Purpose and Scale

Consumer and Retail Banking Payments:

• Purpose : Focused on individual or small-business transactions such as personal remittances, bill payments, and e-commerce purchases.
• Scale : Typically low-value and high-volume transactions (e.g., millions of payments per day).
• Examples :
• Online banking payments (ACH, NEFT, SEPA Credit Transfers).
• Card-based transactions (credit/debit cards).
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments (e.g., Zelle, Venmo).

Institutional Payments:

• Purpose : Supports payments between financial institutions, corporations, and government entities, often involving large sums or bulk transactions.
• Scale : High-value, lower-volume transactions, but significant in financial impact (e.g., billions of dollars in a single transfer).
• Examples :
• Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) payments (e.g., Fedwire, CHAPS).
• Cross-border payments via SWIFT.
• Corporate payroll processing or bulk vendor payments.