Payment Instruments: Direct-to-creditor payoffs, without the build

Use your own ACH and wire rails to pay creditors directly, with a unique account and routing number for every creditor account a user wants to payoff .

For lenders running debt consolidation, HELOCs, balance transfers, or any type of payoffs at closing, creditor payoffs remain one of the biggest hurdles.

Today, paying off a creditor is manual from the start: a loan officer looks up the amount and enters it by hand, a settlement agent cuts checks, and the borrower is often left to mail them to each institution. It can take more than 14 days and, even then, there's no confirmation the creditor was actually paid.

That's a problem lenders have had to work around, not solve. Some lean on specialty bill pay providers or route through card network rails. Others build direct creditor relationships in-house. All three come with real costs: another vendor to manage, third-party fees, or an engineering lift to handle routing, returns, reversals, and reconciliation across thousands of financial institutions, with ongoing maintenance after that.

Introducing Payment Instruments

Lenders rely on Method's Direct Pay to pay creditors directly without manual lookups, paper checks, or third-party disbursement providers standing between them. Payment Instruments is the newest way lenders can do that, turning any liability account into a routable account with a unique account/routing number, allowing lenders and settlement agents to disburse using their own existing ACH/wire rails.

Payment Instruments gives every verified liability account its own dedicated routing and account number. Lenders send the payoff through their existing ACH or wire rails (no new account to fund or new vendor) and Method automatically routes the funds to the right creditor.

The lender stays in full control. They remain the originator of the transaction, and nothing about their existing treasury, compliance, or back-end ledgering has to change. Payment Instruments doesn't replace how a lender pays creditors but makes their existing process faster and trackable.

Confirmed payoffs get loans to market sooner

Payments are tracked at every stage, with webhook-based status updates across more than 90% of the largest financial institutions. Most electronic payments settle within one to two days, with posting confirmation typically available within three to four.

Once a payoff posts, the lender has confirmation, removing the uncertainty of an unconfirmed payoff and letting the loan reach the secondary market sooner instead of sitting on the balance sheet.

Payment Instruments in action

Method's network spans more than 55 million end users, 350 million accounts, and 20,000+ financial institutions, with over $5 billion in payments processed. Method provides payment coverage for approximately 95% of U.S. consumer liabilities and maintains a 99.8% payment success rate.

A top-five U.S. bank cited Payment Instruments as the unlock for their direct debt payoff product because compliance required them to stay on their own ACH rails.

One leading end-to-end digital mortgage lender, with more than $100 billion in home loans funded, replaced its entire check-based disbursement flow with Payment Instruments. Here's what they achieved with Method:

• <80 days from kickoff to production launch

• 7.5 creditors paid per borrower, on average

• 88% coverage of borrower liabilities

• 14+ days → 3 days payoff time

• 28 days → 21 days time-to-sell on the secondary market

Modernize your disbursement flow

Launch direct-to-creditor digital payments faster while keeping your existing ACH and wire infrastructure. Talk to our team about Payment Instruments.