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NACHA’s long-awaited Secure Vault Payments (SVP) program, which lets consumers make guaranteed payments online through the automated clearing house network, officially became a commercially available product on Thursday after a pilot that began in the spring of 2008. The new product can now be offered by any bank linked to …
Read More »Touting Cost Savings, NACHA Launches Pilot for Deposited Checks
NACHA, the regulator for the automated clearing house network, announced on Tuesday it has launched a long-awaited pilot for a payment method that would let banks convert low-value consumer checks into electronic transactions and then clear them through the ACH. The method, called Deposited Check Truncation (DCT), is intended to …
Read More »Latest ACH Stats Reflect Consumer Shift to Electronic Bill Pay
Overall automated clearing house transaction volumes grew only 1.5% in the second quarter versus the year-earlier period, but most of the electronic-check ACH applications grew faster. The notable exception was ARC, for accounts-receivable conversion of bill payments sent to lockboxes. Continuing a trend that started two years ago and likely …
Read More »A Survey Reveals a Rising Volume of Disputed ACH Debits
Transaction volumes are rising on the automated clearing house, but a recently released survey shows a nasty side effect of this growth is a rise in the volume of disputed transactions. Some 63% of processors and financial institutions reported they handled more disputed, or unauthorized, payments last year than in …
Read More »A Third Bank Settles with LML in Broad-Based ACH Patent Cases
A Canadian processor that has sued more than a dozen major banks and PayPal Inc. over a patent it says covers virtually all of the electronic-check payment types supported by the automated clearing house network scored another victory with its announcement on Monday of a settlement with San Francisco-based Union …
Read More »NACHA Mulls Recurring TEL Debits, Other E-Check Changes
NACHA, governing body of the automated clearing house, is considering rules changes that could add volume to the ACH. Among them: allowing recurring payments under the TEL code for telephone-authorized electronic-check conversions; raising the dollar limit to $50,000 for three major e-check codes, and eliminating opt-out notification requirements on two …
Read More »Thanks to Tempo, Discover Enters Decoupled Debit
In relaunching a debit rewards card for the QuikTrip Corp. convenience-store chain this week with a new issuer and new payment card network, specialty debit processor Tempo Payments Inc. plugged Discover Financial Services into the decoupled-debit market. And after concentrating on non-profits for the past year, Tempo says more Discover-branded …
Read More »The Emerging Case for a Rules Change to Force Same-Day ACH
With the Federal Reserve set to begin offering on Monday same-day clearing of automated clearing house transactions (Digital Transactions News, July 13), some industry observers are starting to push for a rules change that would mandate banks’ participation in this or a like service. “We either need a core [of …
Read More »A ‘Bill Me Later’ for Bill Pay Launches with a $4.5 Million Warchest
BillFloat Inc. launched its service this week with a hefty vote of confidence from initial investors that include PayPal Inc. and a business proposition that grants spot credit to hard-up consumers so they can delay paying their bills. Like Bill Me Later, which grants so-called transactional credit for online purchases, …
Read More »Same Day ACH Will Be a Boon for Web And Mobile–But How Soon?
Now that same-day clearing is coming to the automated clearing house network, payments players are starting to parse the impact the faster settlement time will have on emerging payment methods that rely at least in part on the ACH. While many payments executives are enthusiastic about the change, some experts …
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