From batch files to online clearing: Mastercard RTC support goes live on SOLAR
Solanteq has implemented support for Mastercard Real-Time Clearing (RTC) in the SOLAR platform and brought it live in a bank’s production environment — one of the first RTC launches in Mastercard’s Eastern Europe division.
The production pilot is running in Clear Now mode for a dedicated domestic Mastercard BIN range across 500 POS terminals. The next phase will expand RTC across the bank’s Mastercard traffic and migrate the processing of 8,000 POS terminals to SOLAR.
What Real-Time Clearing change
Card authorization has operated online for decades, while clearing has traditionally followed a separate process. In a conventional Dual Message System (DMS) implementation, transactions are authorized online and subsequently cleared through files.
Mastercard Real-Time Clearing enables acquirers to send clearing data online, immediately and on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Mastercard describes this as accelerated clearing and a modern alternative to batch processing that shortens the transaction lifecycle.
RTC supports both ISO 8583 and ISO 20022 messaging. It accelerates clearing, although settlement timing still depends on the applicable scheme configuration and the participant’s processing model.
Clear Now and Clear on Demand
Mastercard offers two RTC interaction models.
Clear Now
Clear Now is used when the final transaction amount is known at authorization. Authorization and clearing are initiated in a single online Financial Request:
Final amount known → authorization and clearing initiated in one message
No separate clearing file or subsequent clearing request is required from the acquirer.
At the message-flow level, this resembles Mastercard’s Single Message System (SMS). However, RTC is not a migration to SMS: it introduces transaction-level online clearing while remaining compatible with the conventional DMS ecosystem.
Clear on Demand
Clear on Demand applies when the amount submitted for authorization is not yet final. Once the final amount has been determined, the acquirer sends an online Financial Advice message linked to the previously approved authorization:
Initial authorization → final amount confirmed → transaction cleared online
This preserves separate authorization and clearing stages while replacing batch-file submission with online, transaction-level processing.
Gradual adoption across the ecosystem
RTC can be activated independently for acquiring and issuing. An institution can therefore adopt the new processing model without waiting for every other participant to become RTC-enabled.
If an acquirer or issuer does not support the online RTC format, Mastercard’s platform converts the messages into a format supported by that participant. RTC and conventional processing can coexist, providing interoperability without requiring full ecosystem readiness.
From certification to production
The Solanteq team delivered the bank-side implementation, addressed Mastercard RTC certification requirements, and completed online, offline and end-to-end testing.
The bank selected Clear Now for the production pilot, allocating a dedicated domestic Mastercard BIN range and 500 POS terminals. This controlled rollout allows the new flow to be validated under real production conditions before wider adoption.
Over the next few weeks, the bank plans to roll out RTC processing across all of its Mastercard traffic on the SOLAR platform.
The launch demonstrates SOLAR’s ability to support the shift from file-based clearing to accelerated, transaction-level online processing while remaining fully interoperable with existing payment infrastructure.
