Dream Payments Launches Dream Payouts, the Payment Network for America's 36 Million Small Businesses
Dream and J.P. Morgan Payments have collaborated to deliver programmable business payments that let companies pay people, partners and suppliers, with eligible payments delivered in real time. Software platforms can embed the same capabilities, creating the foundation for AI agents to initiate, approve and reconcile payments on a business's behalf.
NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, at the J.P. Morgan Payments Innovation Forum, Dream Payments announced Dream Payouts, a programmable business payment network that lets U.S. companies securely initiate payments to people, partners and suppliers.
Eligible payments can arrive in real time, including on nights, weekends and holidays. Software platforms can embed the same capabilities directly into their products.
Paid last, and paid slowest
Small businesses represent 99.9% of all American businesses, employ 62.3 million people, generate 43.5% of U.S. economic activity and created nine of every ten net new jobs last year [1]. Nearly 30 million have no employees, which means the owner is often also the salesperson, the operator and the bookkeeper.
More than 90% of organizations continue to pay by check, and more than three-quarters have no plans to stop [2]. Most businesses cannot originate a real-time payment through their financial institution. Of roughly 10,000 U.S. banks and credit unions, approximately 1,280 participate in The Clearing House RTP network and more than 1,800 participate in FedNow. Many participating institutions can receive instant payments but cannot yet send them [3].
The capabilities to make a payment
To initiate a supplier payment through Dream Payouts, a business needs one piece of information: the supplier's email address.
Dream Wallet. A payments account provided through J.P. Morgan, subject to eligibility and account-opening requirements, that gives a company one place to receive funds, maintain an operating balance and make payments.
Dream Email Payouts. A business enters a recipient's email address and sends the payment. Eligible payments can arrive through the RTP network in under 30 seconds, including on nights, weekends and holidays, with ACH and wire available when real-time delivery is unavailable or not selected [3].
Dream Payee Portal. Suppliers onboard through the Dream Payee Portal, enter and maintain their own banking details and choose how they want to be paid. Once enrolled, they remain ready to receive future payments through the network.
Dream Payment Controls. Roles, limits and approval workflows separate the people who request payments from the people who release them, with every transaction tracked from initiation through settlement. In addition, email addresses are securely stored and validated. The email itself never carries payment instructions: Dream invites each recipient to onboard onto the network, verify their identity with multi-factor authentication, and confirm their banking details directly with their bank. The result is protection against the most common forms of business payment fraud: vendor impersonation, intercepted messages and altered banking instructions fail because there is nothing in the email to steal and no payment detail to change.
Moving money at the speed of business
Speed matters most to the person waiting to be paid.
The supplier, contractor or crew receiving a business payment is often another small business operating with the same limited financial cushion. The JPMorganChase Institute, using data from 1.4 million small businesses, found that half operate with fewer than 15 cash-buffer days, the number of days a business could cover its normal outflows if money stopped coming in [4].
Every business that pays in seconds instead of days helps close that gap for another business.
Dream Payouts also changes how supplier banking information is handled. Suppliers maintain their own payment details inside the Dream Payee Network, reducing the need for payer employees to collect, store or manually update supplier account information.
The FBI recorded $3.05 billion in reported business email compromise losses in 2025 [5]. These schemes frequently involve vendor impersonation, fraudulent changes to banking instructions and the diversion of legitimate payments. Seventy-six percent of U.S. organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud during the same period [2].
Supplier-managed payment credentials do not eliminate fraud risk. They can reduce one of its most persistent attack surfaces: the manual collection and alteration of vendor banking details.
Why J.P. Morgan Payments
J.P. Morgan Payments processes nearly $12 trillion each day across more than 160 countries and 120 currencies. Its scale, APIs and direct connectivity to real-time payment infrastructure allow Dream to extend capabilities developed for large institutions to small businesses and the software platforms serving them. By combining the regulatory and payments expertise of a leading financial institution with the agility of a modern technology organization, J.P. Morgan Payments enables Dream and its customers to focus on serving their clients.
Through the collaboration for Dream Wallet, businesses gain access to modern and secure account and embedded payment infrastructure while continuing to operate inside the products and workflows they already use.
"Our work with Dream helps extend trusted payment infrastructure to more businesses and into the software where they already work, at speed and with the resiliency and stability of a leading global financial institution," said Ryan Schmiedl, Global Head of Embedded Finance & Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments. "As AI expands software development capabilities, our embedded payments capability can help unlock growth, deepen client relationships and capture proprietary data. Software-as-a-service and vertical software platforms can become increasingly integral to their clients' operations by leveraging our scale and expertise, paired with the appropriate safeguards to maintain a safe environment."
Built into the software businesses already use
Small businesses increasingly operate through software, and software is often where the obligation to pay is created.
An invoice is approved inside accounting software. A capital call is initiated inside a private-markets platform. A contractor completes work inside a field-service system. Inventory is ordered through an operating platform.
Software platforms can connect Dream Email Payouts, the Dream Payee Network and Dream Payment Controls directly into those moments.
Platforms can offer a more complete financial product, create new revenue opportunities and let customers move money without leaving the software where the work is already happening.
Few pools of capital move the economy like family offices which manage over $10 trillion in assets globally, making them among the most influential sources of capital in private markets. Mantle is the financial operating system where family offices manage workflows tied to trillions of dollars in underlying private market assets. Yet the money itself still moves the way it did decades ago: a capital call arrives as a PDF in an inbox, approvals travel by email, and millions of dollars are wired.
Mantle has partnered with Dream to transform how family offices fund their commitments by embedding Dream Payouts directly inside its platform. A capital call can now be reviewed, approved and paid in the same place it arrives, and the money can move the moment it is approved, tracked from commitment to completion.
"Family offices fund the startups and growth companies driving innovation across the country, yet capital calls are still coordinated over email and the money still moves days after the commitment is made," said Amar Varma, CEO of Mantle. "Building on Dream brings the capital call and the payment into Mantle itself."
"There is no physical reason a business payment should take three days," said Long Van, President of SMB Payments and Chief AI & Technology Officer at Dream Payments. "The delay was never the money. It was the plumbing. An email address should be enough to pay someone, and now it can be."
Dream Payouts is available now to eligible businesses in the United States. Businesses can sign up, and software platforms can request partner access, at www.dreampayouts.com.
The largest enterprises in America have moved money in real time for years. Today, small businesses can too.
About Dream Payments
Dream Payments is the API-first, cloud-native platform powering embedded payments and programmable money for North America's leading banks, insurers and software platforms.
Dream enables clients and partners to collect payments, send funds, store balances and earn yield inside their own customer experiences.
Whether it is a financial institution transforming merchant services, an insurer issuing real-time claims payments or a software platform embedding pay-in and payout capabilities, Dream provides the financial infrastructure through which money moves securely, programmatically and at scale.
Learn more at www.dreampayments.com.
Media Contact
Nicole Pope
Dream Payments
[email protected]
References
[1] U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026, February 3, 2026.
[2] Association for Financial Professionals, AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report. Payments-fraud figures are from the 2026 edition, published April 14, 2026, reporting on 2025 activity. Check-usage figures are from the 2025 edition, as also reported by Federal Reserve Financial Services.
[3] The Clearing House, RTP network, reporting more than 1,280 participants as of June 2026, and Federal Reserve Financial Services, FedNow Service, reporting more than 1,800 participants as of July 2026. Participant totals are reported independently by each operator and should not be interpreted as a combined count of unique financial institutions.
[4] JPMorganChase Institute, Small Business Cash Liquidity in 25 Metro Areas, April 2020.
[5] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report, April 6, 2026.
Company-specific figures concerning Dream Payments, J.P. Morgan Payments, and Mantle were supplied by the respective companies.
SOURCE Dream Payments
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