In March 2018, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network started supporting same-day credit settlement between any two financial institutions in the United States for the first time.
Since the ACH system processes 90% of all funds transferred in the US, it’s important for finance teams to understand. ACH may be your company’s preferred method of reimbursing expenses, paying vendor invoices, even running payroll. The ability to move payments faster with same-day ACH can fundamentally change your finance and expense policies.
Here’s a beginner-level explanation of ACH and what exactly is about to change.
Related: Get the full rundown on managing employee expenses and reimbursements
What is ACH?
The Automated Clearing House network is the principal system of electronic funds transfer in the United States. It was created in the 1970s to allow regular, predictable payments to be transferred without paper checks. Stability, not speed, was the founding principle. An ACH transaction starts out as an instruction sent from an originating bank to a recipient bank. The instruction is sent as a digital file through the Federal Reserve, which acts as a clearing house. The recipient bank must process their backlog of instructions by 8:30AM every day, which is a deadline known as the “settlement window.” Because ACH uses a pre-email system of electronic file transfer, there’s no other contact between the two banks; the settlement window is the only time by which the originating financial institution can be sure that the recipient bank has processed their ACH instructions. (To see a technical breakdown of the ACH process, read this excellent blog series from Gusto.) Traditionally, ACH rules (which are set by a nonprofit governing body called NACHA) required only one settlement window every day. If you initiated an ACH credit at 9:00AM on Monday — meaning you told your bank to push money into another bank account — you wouldn’t know that the recipient bank had processed it until 8:30 Tuesday morning. Therefore, it would only be then that you could consider the ACH transaction official and complete.How Same-Day ACH Transfers Work
In 2015, NACHA decided to speed up ACH processing times. ACH transfers had traditionally taken two to even five business days to process up until that point. After years of lobbying from customers and industry experts, the governing body voted to move forward with a campaign they dubbed “same-day ACH.”What Time of Day Do Same-Day ACH Transactions Post?
In 2015, NACHA approved a plan to implement two new settlement windows every business day: one at 1:00PM EST and another at 5:00PM. These two new windows were in addition to the existing 8:30AM EST window. With three system-wide processing deadlines every day, you could send a same-day ACH transaction at 9:30AM and be sure the request would be processed by 1:00PM the same day. The project of getting every bank in the US aligned on a three-times-a-day settlement schedule transpired in three phases. All of these rules only apply to domestic transactions under $25,000:-
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- On September 15, 2017, banks additionally needed to accept debit requests in the same three settlement windows.
- Starting September 23, 2016, financial institutions were required to be able to process ACH credit requests in all three settlement windows. (That means simply being able to process requests to add funds to an account.)
- On March 16, 2018, banks were required to make funds available by 5:00PM local time for ACH credit transactions processed in the day’s first two settlement windows. (That means not just appearing as “Pending” on your bank ledger, but being fully settled as a completed transaction.)
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The Impact of Same-Day ACH Transfers
Same-day ACH payments don’t make available instant payments or even same-day funds, necessarily. The same-day transaction means that every bank in the US supports the ability to process outstanding requests three times a day instead of once. Not all transactions are eligible to settle same-day, but virtually every payment processes faster. This was an important step forward for the US payments system. ACH is a heavy-duty set of rails that is stable and secure enough to handle institutional funds transfers of all sizes. Thrice-daily processing means business-to-business payments speed up and bill payment becomes more flexible. Many companies have even chosen to alter their payroll processing in light of these changes. Prior to the project’s launch NACHA’s research identified 63 potential use cases for same-day ACH transfers. Some of the most prominent were:-
- Payroll. Same-day credit settlement helps companies pay hourly or temp workers faster, and even have funds available by the end of the day the payroll is initiated.
- Urgent funds transfer. Extremely time-sensitive payments are possible—everything from medical insurance disbursements to paying a bill before it’s overdue.
- B2B payments. Trading partners are able to settle invoice payments faster, and include remittance information amongst themselves.
Same-Day ACH is a Choice
The last critical thing to know: this is an elective option that originators can make. Same-day ACH is simply an option for moving payments faster. Not all ACH transfers adhere to the same-day schedule. It’s like choosing next-day delivery from a parcel carrier instead of the regular ground shipping option. In fact, part of the Same-day ACH rule was the creation of a new 5.2¢ fee to be remitted to the recipient bank to subsidize the added cost of meeting three processing deadlines a day. The ACH network still supports slower processing times like the traditional next-day transactions. But for the first time, the originating bank, for a small fee, can opt to have their transaction request processed in just a few hours.