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The ability to offer real-time payments has become the most important factor business leaders consider when choosing a banking partner, according to Citizens’ annual payments and treasury survey.

Citizens’ nationwide survey of 260 corporate decision-makers found that 85 percent of respondents cited a bank’s real-time payments capabilities as the most important factor when deciding on a banking partner. This was the first time that real-time payments was the top factor in the annual survey, Citizens said in a statement. Other factors included the ability to provide the lowest-cost financing and a bank’s expertise in the firm’s industry.

Providence-based Citizens is among the U.S. banks and credit unions that have joined the RTP network, created by The Clearing House. The network allows customers to make payments electronically and have the funds move instantaneously from one account to another. The transaction includes information about the payment, so recipients know where the money came from and the reason for the payment. The Federal Reserve expects to launch its own real-time payments network, Fed Now, in 2023.

When asked how they anticipated using RTP, survey respondents most often cited managing cash flow more accurately and handling payments requiring immediate attention.

“I continue to be encouraged by the growing interest in real-time payments because it offers such enormous benefits to businesses in terms of speed and certainty of payments,” Matt Richardson, head of treasury product solutions at Citizens, said in the statement. “As businesses bounce back from the pandemic, they are adopting digital solutions that they may have tried out of necessity for the first time during the lockdowns.”

The survey found that 81 percent of respondents believed that real-time payments, if adopted, would be very or somewhat transformative to their firm’s payments process.

Business leaders expect banks to continue to upgrade technology, with 83 percent of respondents saying they expect their bank to leverage the latest technological tools to help their business compete. And 83 percent expect their bank to provide their business with more self-service capabilities where needed.

The survey also found that 73 percent of respondents were interested in having a secure mobile-optimized treasury management platform. Of those who use treasury management platforms as part of their day-to-day work, nearly nearly 40 percent expressed frustration with their current technology solution, according to the statement, saying that the majority of their time spent working with their treasury management platform could be more productive.

Respondents most often cited security as the feature that should be improved or added to their current treasury management platform.

The survey of corporate decision-makers was conducted between Oct. 22 and Nov. 4 and included businesses in different sectors with annual revenue of $1 million to $25 million (37 percent), $25 million to $100 million (17 percent) and more than $100 million (46 percent).