While there’s a healthy competition among the thousands of banks and credit unions across the United States, there’s also a time when that needs to put aside for the common good. 

“At an industry level, for us to be successful, we have to work together. It’s not just BNY or one of the other banks or Nacha on its own. We really need the community to drive and align on where we want to push the industry forward,” said Carl Slabicki, Head of Commercial for Global Payments & Trade at BNY, and Vice Chairperson of the Nacha Board of Directors. 

“That’s from how we continue to promote education and best practices to prepare our collective teams to navigate some of these challenges more effectively. It’s where we agree on standards to just make operating models more efficient,” Slabicki told Nacha’s Payments SmartCast podcast. And as a weapon in the war on fraud, cooperation is crucial to determine the future of risk and fraud prevention in the industry. Slabicki said it can take many forms. 

“It can come in rules and governance and enforcement. It can come into raising standards on what the minimum requirements are to participate in the [ACH] Network,” said Slabicki. 

Another key—and perhaps one of the trickiest—is fraud information sharing. 

“How do we collectively, as an industry and as a Network, navigate that, because there are data privacy issues and concerns. But there’s also a tremendous benefit of working together,” said Slabicki. “And we all know in the industry the fraudsters and the perpetrators, they work together, they share information. How do we share information in the right way across the banking institutions to be able to combat that, to spot those trends fast, and ultimately action them?” 

During a wide-ranging discussion on the podcast, Slabicki said next year’s increase in the Same Day ACH per payment limit to $10 million “opens up a whole new set of use cases that we’re excited to engage our customers about over the next year and get them prepared.” 

As for the future of faster payments overall, Slabicki said, “The biggest thing that’s top of mind for me at the moment is that so much of our financial ecosystem is really moving into a 24/7/365 operating model.” The ACH Network, he said, is “a ubiquitous Network, well-governed, with standards. What is the role and benefit that we can glean on from the ACH Network to support that type of economy and that type of ecosystem over the next five to 10 years? And how do we pair the benefit of what we’ve built versus what the inevitable future is bringing in the next five years?” 

“That’s going to be the fun part about what we all try to collectively figure out.” 

Much more was discussed, and you can listen to the complete podcast below.