Glenbrook's Jim Salters will be attending the Payments 2008 conference being held this coming week - May 18-21 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America have announced the formation of a joint venture to operate a single, combined automated clearinghouse (ACH) platform for both companies and their clients. The new entity, called Pariter Solutions LLC, will be the country's largest processor of ACH payments.   » Continue Reading

The NACHA Board of Directors has selected Janet O. Estep, most recently an executive vice president with U.S. Bank, to succeed Elliott McEntee, who will retire as president and chief executive officer at the end of 2008. During the transition period, Estep will serve as president and chief operating officer and McEntee will continue as chief executive officer.   » Continue Reading

EPN, the ACH business of The Clearing House Payments Company, is urging financial institutions to start planning now to meet OFAC requirements for new international ACH transactions (IAT) in March 2009 and has created an IAT Readiness Checklist to help financial institutions prepare.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that Secure Vault Payments is now a live alternative payment option. The ACH-based Internet payments network allows consumers to conduct e-commerce and bill payment transactions without sharing personal account information.   » Continue Reading

PaySimple has announced the availability of PaySimple 2.0 that the company says 'helps small businesses bridge the technology gap, and to grow with the efficiency and cost-savings that large companies have, but with the customization and personal touch that small companies need.' With PaySimple Solution 2.0's Payment Processing Center, users have the ability to electronically collect payments via eCheck/ACH or credit card as well as pay their vendors via those channels from one system.   » Continue Reading

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency late last week issued new risk management guidance to banks on the subject of payment processors. The OCC said that 'certain merchants, such as telemarketers, pose a higher risk than other merchants and require additional due diligence and close monitoring.'   » Continue Reading

The International Payments Framework Group (IPF) has announced its decision to go forward with the next phase of the project. According to IPF, 'Phase II will improve the cross-border payments process through operating rules that will enable interoperability between domestic and international ACH systems.'   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its "Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service (EBIDS), which speeds up the ability of consumers to receive electronic bills (eBills) at the online provider of their choice, recently began operation. The first transaction was the presentment and payment of a Verizon bill. Verizon is one of the founding participants of EBIDS."   » Continue Reading

Metavante has announced that it will process and settle transactions for NACHA’s Secure Vault Payments, an automated clearing house (ACH)-based Internet payments system that allows consumers to conduct e-commerce and bill payment transactions without sharing personal or account information online.   » Continue Reading

As part of an effort to improve ACH Network quality by reducing unrecognized transactions, "the voting membership of NACHA has approved the Company Name Identification Rule, an amendment to the NACHA Operating Rules that will enable consumers to more readily identify companies and other parties that are the sources of ACH transactions. Specifically, this rule will require a company to identify itself within the ACH transaction by the name that is known and readily recognized by the consumer."   » Continue Reading

Memento has introduced a solution to address the escalating Automated Clearing House (ACH) fraud problem. The company says that "through proactive monitoring and detection, Memento Security, the company’s flagship platform, quickly identifies fraudulent activities that include identity fraud, kiting, reverse phishing, insider fraud and counterfeiting."

Separately, Memento announced that Shirley Inscoe and Mike Mulholand have joined the company. Inscoe, former Senior Vice President of Enterprise Payments Strategy at Wachovia, will be Memento’s Director of Financial Services Solutions. Mulholand, former Vision Risk Product Marketing Manager at banking and payments technology provider Metavante, has been named Director of Fraud Solutions Strategy.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson recently spoke with Elliott McEntee, President and CEO of NACHA about two current payment industry issues - NACHA's reaction to "de-coupled debits" and the progress of the Secure Vault Payments program. She's filed this report on the discussion.

Goldleaf Financial Solutions has announced the acquisition of Atlanta-based Alogent, a provider of enterprise deposit automation technologies for global financial institutions. According to the company, the acquisition "strengthens Goldleaf’s leadership in converging payments, allowing the company to expand market presence, extends its customers base and creates significant cross-selling opportunities. Goldleaf now has 81,000 deposit automation touch points, in addition to more than 25,000 ACH endpoints, which showcases its deep penetration in the financial services market."   » Continue Reading

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Payments System Research Department has published a new Payment System Research Briefing by Terri Bradford titled "The Evolution of the ACH" . "This article ... summarizes the beginnings of the ACH, exciting changes underway today, and possible further changes in the future."   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that it has formed a Mobile Banking Work Group to develop an ACH payment platform strategy for mobile banking. The group’s participants will include representatives from across the industry recruited from NACHA’s councils.   » Continue Reading

The Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorneys general have charged a payment processor with violating federal and state laws by debiting, or attempting to debit from consumers’ bank accounts on behalf of numerous fraudulent telemarketers and Internet-based merchants.   » Continue Reading

The 2007 Federal Reserve Payments Study released today concludes that "in 2006 more than two-thirds of all U.S noncash payments were made electronically. From 2003 to 2006, the period covered by the study, all types of electronic payments grew while check payments decreased. The Federal Reserve’s 2004 Payments Study found that the number of electronic payments and check payments were roughly equal in 2003."   » Continue Reading

PAYMENTS 2008, NACHA's annual conference, will be held May 18-21, 2008 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. A "showcase event for the electronic payments industry", the 2008 edition will include new environmental meeting practices that will also provide benefits for the attendee, the association, and the community.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its voting membership has approved the Network Enforcement Rule as an amendment to the NACHA Operating Rules. "The implementation of the Network Enforcement Rule, the first rule change under NACHA’s comprehensive risk management strategy, is intended to give NACHA and the ACH Rules Enforcement Panel greater ability to enforce the NACHA Operating Rules."   » Continue Reading

NACHA’s CEO search committee has announced the search criteria for its next chief executive officer and president. Comprised of members of the NACHA Board, the search committee has retained Korn/Ferry International to manage the search process.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson filed an update on NACHA-related topics this morning from this week's Association for Financial Professionals conference in Boston.

The National Association of Federal Credit Union's web site has an article titled "NACHA releases interim data-breach policy" describing a new NACHA policy that requires ACH participants to "nform NACHA and others if they believe consumer information has been lost or gotten into the wrong hands."

The Department of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have announced the release of a joint proposed rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The Act prohibits gambling businesses from accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks.   » Continue Reading

Julie Schieffer writes for Financial News about steps being taken to improve the fraud risk management of the automated clearing house system in the US.

Naureen Malik writes for the Wall St. Journal about how TicketNetwork migrated away from billing its customers via credit card to using the ACH instead - saving money in the process and reducing customer service hassles and costs associated with dealing with expiring card account numbers, etc. The company still accepts credit cards for dealing with individuals.

NACHA has announced the formation of a "green coalition" to educate consumers about the positive environmental impacts of choosing electronic bills, statements, and payments over paper. The leadership partners include Bank of America, CheckFree, Citibank, Citizens Bank, EPN, the Federal Reserve Banks, Fiserv, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced the fee structure for its online payments pilot, Secure Vault Payments (SVP). According to NACHA, "the pilot, scheduled to go live the first quarter of 2008, will enable consumers to initiate private and secure payments for purchases and bill payments through their financial institutions' online banking platforms. During the pilot, participating financial institutions will authenticate consumers and provide real-time payment authorizations for ACH Network transactions to the participating online businesses."

According to our calculations, on a $50 purchase, the fees would be: 1) an authorization fee of $0.675 paid from the merchant's bank to the consumer's bank, a $0.06 switch fee paid by the merchant's bank, another $0.06 switch fee paid by the consumer's bank, a $0.01 network fee paid to NACHA by the merchant's bank and another $0.01 network fee paid to NACHA by the consumer's bank. The total of all the fees here - not including any mark-up by the merchant's bank to the merchant - would be $0.815 or about 1.63% of the purchase amount. Read on for the details of NACHA's announcement.

Update - September 18, 2007: We spoke with NACHA this morning about our calculations above. While the total fees collected from all parties involved on a $50 transaction are the $0.815 shown above, the fees charged to merchants for a Secure Vault Payments transaction would be the authorization fee of $0.675 paid by the merchant's bank, plus the $0.06 switch fee paid by the merchant's bank, plus the $0.01 network fee to NACHA paid by the merchant's bank. Those merchant-side fees total $0.745 on a $50 purchase or about 1.49% of the purchase amount. The merchant's bank will, of course, need to charge additional processing fees to the merchant for providing the Secure Vault Payments service which would be over and above those "wholesale" fees.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its voting membership has approved "an amendment to the NACHA Operating Rules that will require all international payments made via the ACH Network to be identified as International ACH Transactions using a new Standard Entry Class (SEC) Code--IAT. The new Rule will also require that IAT payments include specific data elements defined by the Bank Secrecy Act's (BSA) "Travel Rule (i)." The implementation date of the rule amendment is March 20, 2009."   » Continue Reading

Broox Peterson shares some of his thoughts in a commentary reflecting on Capital One's recent introduction of a new "decoupled debit" card program.   » Continue Reading

Tempo Payments made two announcements this morning. The first, a "Decoupled Debit Option for Financial Institutions" that "enables financial institutions and other issuers to rapidly deploy comprehensive ACH-based debit card programs." The second, the "availability of the Tempo Payment Platform, the first hosted solution that enables financial institutions and other issuers to rapidly deploy innovative card payment solutions."   » Continue Reading

Glen Fest writes for Bank Technology News about ACH fraud and new proposals under consideration that "would also require originators to maintain statistics on their return activity and rid themselves of problem firms (read: telemarketers) that blatantly violate NACHA rules with improper Web- or telephone-based authorizations-each helping to form the basis of a de facto originators blacklist."

Kerry Miller reports for Business Week about a two-year-old company called National Payment Card that enables payments using a consumer's driver's license and a PIN - with the transaction linked directly to the consumers checking account. According to Miller, "NPC started piloting the patent-pending technology at a handful of gas stations in Texas this January. Since then the company has signed contracts to roll out the system to five regional convenience store chains starting in June."

Glenbrook's Jim Salters was at NACHA's Payments 2007 conference earlier this week. Jim filed the following report from the conference.   » Continue Reading

NACHA's credit push initiative has a new name - Secure Vault Payments - and web site. "This model allows the consumer to select an online payment option that will "redirect" them to their trusted bank site that will authenticate them in a multi-factor environment and allow their information to remain private while sending a real-time authorization and a confirmation of payment (ACH credit) to the business." And for banks, "it allows financial institutions to generate additional direct revenue from the online banking channel, offsetting the costs of supporting the channel, which continue to increase – particularly in the areas of authentication and security." For financial institutions, a comprehensive set of technical information is available for download along with a series of FAQs and focus group results from consumers and merchants.

NACHA has released the NACHA Top 50 lists of the largest originating and receiving financial institutions of automated clearing house (ACH) payments for 2006. The Top 5 originating institutions accounted for 59.1 percent of all ACH origination activity while the top 5 receiving institutions accounted for Top 5 institutions accounted for 28.5 percent of all ACH received activity.   » Continue Reading

JPMorgan Chase has announced it has been ranked as the number-one financial institution in total automated clearing house (ACH) network transactions originated for 2006 by NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association. The Bank has ranked first in ACH originations for a record 32 years in a row, since the inception of the network. JPMorgan Chase saw its ACH transactions grow to nearly 3.6 billion in 2006, an increase of 16 percent over the previous year.   » Continue Reading

The Clearing House Payments Company has announced that "UPIC payments soared in 2006, as a record number of companies, government agencies and universities began receiving secure electronic payments via the unique bank account identifier."   » Continue Reading

NACHA reported today that nearly 16 billion automated clearing house (ACH) payments were made in 2006, a 14.5 percent increase over 2005. NACHA reported that Internet-initiated ACH payments (WEB) grew by an estimated 35 percent to 1.8 billion.   » Continue Reading

NetDeposit has announced a new offering designed to provide financial institutions with the ability to support their commercial customers in electronically processing checks under the new Back Office Conversion (BOC) rules. NetDeposit's support of BOC provides financial institutions the tools and technology necessary for them to quickly take advantage of BOC and extend the advantages of remote deposit capture (RDC) throughout their retail and commercial markets.   » Continue Reading

According to a consumer survey commissioned by NACHA's Marketing Management Group, consumers who use direct deposit or direct payment to add to their savings accounts save $90 more per month than those who use another method to save. The survey showed that only 36 percent of respondents use direct deposit or direct payment to save with the majority doing their saving by depositing checks or cash (41%) or by manually transferring money between accounts (13%).   » Continue Reading

Fifth Third Bank has joined NACHA as a direct financial institution member, becoming the third new NACHA member in 2007. According to the most recent NACHA Top 50 list, Fifth Third is the nation's 18th largest originating financial institution and the 14th largest receiving financial institution of ACH payments.   » Continue Reading

BITS has released an ACH Check Conversion Risk Management Toolkit (PDF) to "educate financial institutions’ fraud department personnel and investigators about the benefits and risks associated with ACH check conversion." Interestingly, the report includes this comment: "The ACH network, which historically has had minimal fraud, has seen a large uptick in fraudulent transactions, similar to the various types of fraud experienced in the check environment environment."   » Continue Reading

Bank of America has announced that its suite of check transformation tools will allow retailers and other business clients to take full advantage of the new Back Office Conversion rule that took effect on March 16, 2007. The Back Office Conversion (BOC) rule was issued by NACHA to allow businesses to collect a check written at the checkout counter and convert it in the back office into an electronic form.   » Continue Reading

Back Office Conversion (BOC), the newest form of check conversion, becomes available in the marketplace on Friday, March 16, 2007 with the effective date of NACHA's rules. BOC will allow retailers and billers that accept checks at the point-of-sale or at manned bill payment locations to convert eligible checks to ACH debits in the back-office.   » Continue Reading

Washington Mutual (WaMu) has joined NACHA as a direct financial institution member. According to the most recent NACHA Top 50 list, WaMu is the nation's fifth largest receiving financial institution of ACH payments.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that, effective January 1, 2007, it will begin "assessing financial institutions a fee of $0.0001 on all ACH transactions except "on-us" transactions. NACHA is also assessing every financial institution using the ACH Network an annual fee of $42, including those that choose not to be members of Regional Payments Associations."   » Continue Reading

Synovus Financial Corp. has joined NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association as a direct financial institution member.   » Continue Reading

U.S. Bank has announced that it "is prepared to meet the needs of retailers and other customers who wish to take advantage of check electronification opportunities for point-of-sale (POS) payments when NACHA’s check conversion rules change for Back Office Conversion (BOC) on March 16, 2007." The bank has launched a new enhancement to U.S. Bank Electronic Check Service designed to meet the needs of multi-lane retailers by eliminating the investment in check imaging technology at the point of sale.   » Continue Reading

The Aite Group has published a new report titled "Converging Wire Transfer and Automated Clearing House (ACH) to Revolutionize U.S. Electronic Wholesale Payments" that concludes the US payments industry could save $7 billion annually if the two systems were converged into a single electronic system. According to Aite, "converging the wire transfer and ACH systems will provide optimum payments capabilities and services, significant cost savings, and revenue-generating opportunities."

NACHA has announced that it accredited or re-accredited 668 payments industry professionals in 2006 under the Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) Program. The current number of AAPs nationwide is now at an all-time high of 3,036, and has increased by 85 percent since 1999.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'The U.S. Payments System: Needing Consolidation, or Fine As Is?" by Christopher Westfall, Managing Editor of the KPMG Banking Insider, one senior banker is quoted as saying "right now there are too many ways to pay into too many systems." Westfall's article looks at efforts underway examining potential consolidation of US payments - in particular, convergence of the ACH and check image exchanges.

Jennifer Bracken writes for the Cleveland Morning Journal that Cleveland-area Catholic churches are giving parishioners a new ACH debit option that allows church parishioners to have a specified amount of money deducted from their bank account and deposited to the church.

NACHA has announced it is accepting nominations for the 2007 George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award and the 2007 Kevin O'Brien ACH Quality Award. The Call for Nominations with instructions and additional information is available on NACHA's web site. Nominations are due February 2, 2007.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced the promotions of Debbie Barr, Samantha Carrier, and Cari Conahan to senior staff positions, and has also hired George Throckmorton to a senior staff position.   » Continue Reading

Intuit has announced a new suite of software applications that the company says "will help financial institutions win new online customers by simplifying the online account opening process."   » Continue Reading

NACHA has released resource materials that businesses and financial institutions can use to begin for training customer service staff about the new ACH check conversion application. Enabled by new NACHA rules that become effective March 16, 2007, back office conversion (BOC) allows businesses and billers that accept checks at the point-of-sale or at manned bill payment locations to convert eligible checks to ACH debits in a centralized location.   » Continue Reading

PAYMENTS 2007, NACHA's annual conference on electronic payments, will be held in Chicago from April 15-18, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson files this report: I spoke on Friday with Barry Campbell, Director of Business Development for Acxsys Corporation and Interac Online, Canada's "credit push" online payment system.   » Continue Reading

The Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH business of The Clearing House Payments Company L.L.C., has announced that the number of UPIC payments increased tenfold to 47,700 through the first three quarters of 2006, compared to the same period a year ago. Institutions now issuing UPICs include Citibank, Commerce Bank, HSBC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, M&T Bank, Mellon, PNC, State Bank of Long Island, Sterling National Bank, Union Bank of California, USBank and Wachovia Bank.   » Continue Reading

Payformance Corporation has announced that it is offering an additional level of fraud security through support of the Electronic Payment Network’s UPIC secure account identifier. A UPIC (Universal Payment Identification Code) is a unique identifier that masks the actual bank account numbers of corporate payees when electronic payments take place.   » Continue Reading

BMO Capital Markets has joined NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association - as a direct financial institution member. NACHA now has 40 direct members, consisting of 21 financial institutions and 19 regional payment associations. The other financial institution members include ABN-AMRO, American Express Centurion Bank, Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, Citigroup, Citizens Bank, Commerce Bank, Discover Bank, Fort Knox National Bank, JPMorgan Chase, KeyBank, Mellon, National City, PNC Bank, TCF National Bank, US Bank, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and Zions Bank. The 19 regional payments associations collectively represent more than 11,000 financial institutions.   » Continue Reading

Debitman Card issued a press release today providing more details about convenience store chain Wawa joining the Debitman payment network and issuing the private-label Wawa Check Card. According to the press release, the new Wawa Check Card will "reward customer loyalty with an initial $5.00 gift card after the first use, followed by cash rebates on every purchase" that will be deposited monthly directly into the customer's bank account that is linked to the Wawa Check Card.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced that, in anticipation of an upcoming rule change by NACHA, it will integrate its automated clearinghouse (ACH) and account reconciliation plan (ARP) systems to better identify and post converted business checks accurately to clients' accounts.   » Continue Reading

Steve Bills writes for the American Banker about a "sweeping" set of rule changes NACHA is planning to propose designed to help reduce potential fraud risks in the ACH system. In June 2005, NACHA's board failed to adopt a Network Returned Item Fee proposal that was intended to provide the mechanism for a receiving bank to be compensated by the originating bank in the event an ACH item was found to have been unauthorized (submitted in error or fraudulently) by the receiver. Today, there's no such mechanism in the ACH system. Bills reports that this time around NACHA is looking beyond just the returned item fee at other risk management approaches.

"The irony of the story is that, in many respects, banks are responsible for the challenges they face. Banks are pushing for more ACH transactions, new ACH items, without necessarily building up new economics, such as applying interchange fees." - from Gwenn Bezard, research director with the Boston-based Aite Group, as reported in an article by Kenneth Cline in Payments Strategies titled "Can Banks Profit From Payments’ Transition?".

Steve Mott writes for Payments Strategies on the efforts by some in the banking industry to "smash together" check imaging at the point of acceptance with ACH for delivery to the check writer's financial institution. According to Mott, "the stakes are enormous as "checking" goes to the very core of every financial institution's primary customer relationships."

David Kesmodel reports for the Wall St. Journal about concerns raised by the Independent Community Bankers of America about pending legislation in Congress that "would require financial institutions to block payments between U.S. residents and online casinos." Bankers and the ICBA are concerned that the ACH system provides no information about the nature of a recipients business and "would require a massive – and costly – overhaul to allow banks to identify transactions."

With the cost of gasoline at record levels, payments companies aren't missing any opportunities to promote new card programs designed to help consumers save money on gas. Today, Ecount announced seeing a 500% growth in demand for their Fuel Card program over last year - saying that the dramatic increase in demand is due to numerous companies turning to the Ecount Fuel Card program to help provide relief from high gas prices for their employees and customers. Separately, National Payment Card LLC has announced the launch the "first ACH payment card for the gas industry" - saying it provides a way for consumers to pay less for gasoline through an immediate cash reward and for station operators to substantially lower their processing costs for participating consumers compared with the current charges of credit and debit card interchange and processing fees.   » Continue Reading

Cara Nissman writes for Bankrate.com about how more colleges and universities are deciding that it's just too expensive for them to accept credit cards for tuition payments. We reported earlier this month on a move by Brigham Young University to push its students to using echecks for tuition payments.

iBreva, a Palo Alto-based startup, has deployed its mobile phone-based payment system at Bianchini’s Market in Portola Valley, CA. I was shopping for groceries today when I noticed the terminal - a touchscreen device with a wide slot below into which you insert your mobile phone to complete the payment. Here's a press release announcing the new service from earlier this year. At registration time, you link your phone to your checking account and payments are made by ACH debit. Basically, iBreva appears to be a pre-NFC solution that requires (as does Pay by Touch for its fingerprint-based approach) deployment of new POS reader infrastructure - but avoids any requirement for consumers having to have new mobile phone handsets with NFC chips.

KeyBank Global Treasury Management has announced it is "the first bank to offer its commercial clients complete eCheck ACH Payee reporting through all of its check fraud, account reconcilement, controlled disbursement and Positive Pay image services." The service allows clients to verify the names of the vendors and suppliers to whom they make payments.   » Continue Reading

Coleen Shoji, Vice President and Assistant Manager of the Bank of Hawaii's Cash Management and Commercial Deposit Management Center, writes for Hawaii Business about how small businesses can protect themselves against fraudulent ACH debits.

In the article "Paper checks convert to digital - E-checks become popular transaction tool", The Coloradoan's reporter Deon Hampton writes about the increasing use of check conversion at merchant point-of-sale locations and says that "many people ... are intrigued, confused and mystified by the new form of check payment that is popping up not only at shopping centers but also at locally owned establishments."

NACHA has announced the availability of new education and training materials for businesses and financial institutions to implement NACHA's new rules on identifying business checks that are ineligible for conversion. The new rules, which become effective September 15, 2006, provide methods for corporate Originators to identify business checks that are ineligible to be converted and provide corporate Receivers with methods to opt-out of check conversion.   » Continue Reading

Comerica Bank has announced Comerica ACH Positive Pay, a new fraud protection service that will enable commercial customers to accept or reject Automated Clearing House (ACH) items before they are posted to their accounts.   » Continue Reading

CrossCheck has announced CrossCheck Business Office Conversion Plus, a check conversion and guarantee service for consumer and business checks including accounts receivable checks.   » Continue Reading

BizPay Direct has announced commercial availability of both its ‘Deposit on Demand’ (DOD) and ‘Payment on Demand’ (POD) product solutions.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Jim Salters shares a perspective on the reality of payments convergence based upon his recent discussions with senior executives from CheckFree and ACI Worldwide.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Jim Salters reports on Employer Direct Pay, a new service recently introduced by Wells Fargo that enables small businesses to simply and conveniently initiate ACH payments to employees, contractors, and sales agents.   » Continue Reading

Will Wade reports for the American Banker on discussions underway among bankers, the Fed and NACHA exploring using the ACH to clear checks that have been imaged - leveraging the ACH networks ability to reach all banks. Glenbrook's Jim Salters also reported on "best clearing" in his report filed last week following NACHA's Payments 2006. conference in San Diego.

A new web site with more information about NACHA's Online Payments Pilot is now up and running. The site includes a number of documents about the plans for the pilot.

Glenbrook's Jim Salters is back from NACHA's Payments 2006 conference and shares some of his insights with Payments News' readers.   » Continue Reading