ACH/E-CHECK

ACH Processing is a great option for a wide variety of merchants. Visa and Mastercard are everywhere, but many merchants have not yet adopted ACH payments as part of their business. The benefits include lower fees than credit cards and an opportunity to reach more customers. ACH Processing enables you to accept a customer’s checking information by web or phone and set up recurring payments.

The Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network is a payments system that allows corporations and individual consumers to make payments without the use of paper checks. The ACH system was developed in the early 1970’s as the increasing volume of paper checks was expected to grow beyond the processing capacity of computer systems at that time. Initially, the system utilized magnetic tapes and diskettes that were manually transported between participants in the ACH system. In 1994, the Federal Reserve mandated that ACH payment files would be transferred electronically. ACH volume has doubled over the past five years, and nearly 14 Billion transactions were processed in 2005.

It used to be that only the largest companies could access ACH payments. Now they are available to organizations taking a few dozen payments per month as well as to organizations taking tens of thousands of payments each month.

Industries that can benefit

ACH is widely applicable; nearly any industry can benefit, including: