When a transaction involves the use of a payment intermediary (e.g., a Third-Party Service Provider that performs some aspect of payment processing on behalf of a client), those ACH roles may not always be easily identifiable. That’s why Nacha developed and recently updated the Third-Party Sender Identification Tool.

It’s anything but a quiet Friday at Nacha. There are some big changes taking effect today (March 19) at the ACH Network: Same Day ACH, Account Validation and economic impact payments.

ACH payments provide clear benefits compared to check payments. If your company currently does not send ACH payments to vendors/suppliers, you can contact your bank for recommendations on how to get started with sending ACH payments. 

From the beginning in 2016 to the later hours in 2021, how Same Day ACH has seen a major enhancement every year.

Passage of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 into law provides relief for tens of millions of Americans. The ACH Network is ready to deliver these relief payments via Direct Deposit, with funds available to people on the day instructed by the IRS.

As the ACH Network grows, part of that growth can be attributed to an increase in consumer payments made via the internet and mobile devices. With that growth comes a need to ensure account information is accurate before ACH debits are originated. It's one reason why Nacha is implementing the Supplementing Fraud Detection Standards for WEB Debits Rule – often called the Account Validation Rule

Nacha has approved Nacha Certified status for Bill.com, a leading cloud-based software platform which facilitates ACH payments. 

This rule will continue to expand the capabilities of Same Day ACH. Increasing the Same Day ACH dollar limit to $1 million per payment is expected to improve Same Day ACH use cases, and contribute to additional adoption.

The Limitation on Warranty Claims limits the length of time in which an RDFI will be permitted to make a claim against the ODFI’s authorization warranty. The rule will become effective June 30, 2021.

By Richard Oliver & George Warfel Jr.

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These Rules intend to improve and simplify the ACH user-experience by: Facilitating the adoption of new technologies and channels for the authorization and initiation of ACH payments; Reducing barriers to use of the ACH; Providing clarity and increasing consistency around certain ACH authorization processes; and Reducing certain administrative burdens related to ACH authorizations

There are banks that look at Third-Party Senders and—right or wrong—have their doubts. Wayne Gonzales gets it. 

You may never have heard of the Nacha Operating Rules but there’s almost certainly a rule or two (or three, or four) that impacts your life.

The existing ACH Security Framework Rule -- including its data protection requirements -- will be supplemented to explicitly require large, non-FI Originators, Third-Party Service Providers and Third-Party Senders to protect deposit account information by rendering it unreadable when it is stored electronically.

The WEB Debit Account Validation Rule became effective March 19, 2021. The rule was originally approved by Nacha members in November 2018 to become effective January 1, 2020.

This rule expands access to Same Day ACH by allowing Same Day ACH transactions to be submitted to the ACH Network for an additional two hours every business day. The new Same Day ACH processing window became effective on March 19, 2021.

This rule better differentiates among types of unauthorized return reasons for consumer debits. This differentiation will give ODFIs and their Originators clearer and better information when a customer claims that an error occurred with an authorized payment, as opposed to when a customer cl