The Clearing House: Trust Is the Gatekeeper for What’s Next in Payments

Watch more: What’s Next in Payments With The Clearing House’s Sal Karakaplan

A single word rarely captures the trajectory of an entire industry. Yet during periods of structural change, language often provides a useful lens through which priorities, anxieties and ambitions can be understood.

During a conversation for the February edition of the What’s Next in Payments series, “Word of the Year,” Sal Karakaplan, chief strategy officer at The Clearing House, identified the word he believes will define 2026.

“The word of the year is trust,” Karakaplan said, pointing to the steady introduction of new players, new technologies and new payment flows. “All of that change requires for us to have trust.”

The breadth of change Karakaplan referenced spans multiple layers of financial services. Agentic commerce models are beginning to reshape how transactions are initiated and authorized. Policymakers continue to evaluate account structures and access frameworks, including discussions surrounding potential “skinny accounts” from the Federal Reserve.

At the same time, on-chain finance and distributed ledger technologies are reshaping conversations around settlement, liquidity and recordkeeping. Each of these developments introduces new efficiencies and capabilities, yet each also reintroduces enduring questions about security, verification, reliability and accountability.

Karakaplan framed trust not as an abstract virtue, but as a functional requirement that determines whether innovations gain durable adoption.

“People need to trust the entities that they deal with,” he said, linking confidence directly to the performance and stability of underlying systems.

That emphasis aligns with the historical role of payments infrastructure providers. The Clearing House, founded more than 170 years ago, operates largely behind the scenes, where expectations are exacting. Payments infrastructure participants are rarely the focus of consumer attention, yet they remain central to the continuity and integrity of transaction flows. Within that context, trust becomes inseparable from reliability.

“We have delivered resiliency, reliability and trust all along those years,” Karakaplan said. “As a payment network, if you don’t have trust, you do not survive.”

In operational terms, Karakaplan said trust begins with consistent system performance. Payments networks, regardless of technological sophistication, must first meet baseline expectations of continuity and dependability. Interruptions, latency issues or systemic instability quickly erode confidence, particularly as real-time capabilities expand across consumer and commercial use cases.

You have to have reliability, Karakaplan said. “Because if it just doesn’t work, and if it stops working at any time, then you’re in trouble.”

Systems that operate predictably, data that moves securely and controls that perform consistently form the structural basis upon which adoption rests. Layered onto that foundation is responsiveness to evolving market needs. Sustained engagement with banks, nonbanks and end users is important, Karakaplan said, adding that trust also depends on the ability to interpret and address shifting expectations, such as the move to real-time payments.

“As far as I’m concerned, they are table stakes already,” he said of instant payments.

The Clearing House’s RTP® network offers a measurable illustration of this transition. More than 72% of demand deposit accounts are now reachable through RTP, with participation exceeding 1,200 banks, Karakaplan said. These figures reflect not merely network growth, but the gradual normalization of instant payment expectations across financial institutions.

“Introducing a new payment rail and making it ubiquitous [takes] a long game,” he said. “You need to stay with it.”

Alongside scale, security initiatives remain central to sustaining confidence. Demand deposit account (DDA) tokenization is a mechanism designed to protect account credentials as they traverse digital environments, Karakaplan said. As open banking frameworks expand and data flows extend across platforms, safeguarding sensitive information becomes inseparable from broader trust considerations.

Looking ahead, Karakaplan said the check system is another area of strategic focus, referencing government requests for information regarding checks. While paper-based instruments continue their long-term decline, their persistence underscores the uneven pace of payments modernization. Migration toward digital alternatives depends not only on technological readiness but also on user confidence, interoperability and reliability assurances.

Trust considerations are also becoming intertwined with artificial intelligence and open banking frameworks. Agentic payments, particularly within wholesale environments, introduce new operational questions around authorization models, liability structures and governance mechanisms. As AI systems increasingly mediate transaction decisions, trust extends beyond institutions to encompass algorithms, controls and oversight frameworks.

“We need to think about how open banking and agentic is going to play a part in wholesale payments,” Karakaplan said.

Trust ultimately manifests through execution rather than rhetoric, he said. Success depends on the ability to translate market insights into delivered capabilities that enhance reliability, security and usability.

“We need to get new insights from the markets and turn those insights into something that we can actually deliver,” Karakaplan said. “Without that kernel at the beginning, the other things become too tactical.”

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