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.

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

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

Wondering whether the cell phone is about to replace the wallet? Will the disappearance of international border constraints from the payments landscape open as many doors to potential risk as it does to business growth opportunities?Financial institutions and businesses can choose from more than 130 sessions addressing these and other key industry issues at NACHA’s annual conference, PAYMENTS 08, May 18–21 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.   » 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

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.

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

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."

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.

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

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Digital Transactions reports on their interview with NACHA chairman and Wells Fargo EVP Steve Ellis including his views that he expects NACHA to revisit the "network return entry fee" proposal that would compensate have originating banks compensating receiving banks for certain returned ACH items and his expectations about NACHA's new "credit push" Internet payment application.

Nearly 14 billion automated clearing house (ACH) payments were made in 2005, a 16.2 percent increase over 2004, according to statistics announced by NACHA. Annual ACH payment volume has doubled in the last 5 years, spurred by growth across all transaction categories and newer applications used primarily to collect consumers' bill payments.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has released its latest NACHA Top 50 lists of the largest originating and receiving financial institutions of automated clearing house (ACH) payments for 2005.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its voting members have approved an amendment to the NACHA Operating Rules that 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. Known as back-office conversion, or BOC, the rules become effective March 16, 2007.   » Continue Reading

NACHA, Electronic Payments Network and the Federal Reserve Banks have announced that May is Direct Payment Month - where the industry focus will be on increasing consumers' use of electronic payments by highlighting the financial security and control benefits of these services to overcome lingering consumer adoption issues. But, what is Direct Payment you ask?   » Continue Reading

PAYMENTS 2006, NACHA's annual conference on electronic payments, will be held this year in San Diego, California from May 7-10 at the San Diego Convention Center.

As a Payments News reader, you can attend this year's conference at the Member's registration price, $200 less than Non-Member registration. To get your discount, register as a member, select Other as your ACH Council affiliation and key in "Payments News subscriber".

NACHA has announced a new web site - www.electronicpayments.org - designed to be a resource for NACHA members to use to educate and inform consumers about Direct Deposit, Direct Payment and Check Conversion - ACH applications that NACHA says "provide safe and secure consumer payments, improve business and financial institution process and profitability, and strengthen our nation's payment system."

NACHA has announced Authentication Mandate: Compliance Issues & Revenue Opportunities for Online Banking, a conference focusing on the business opportunities resulting from financial institutions' online authentication capabilities and the recent Federal regulatory guidance on authentication in Internet banking.   » Continue Reading

As a follow-up to last week's NACHA announcement, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson spoke with Samantha Carrier, NACHA's project manager on the ACH "Credit Push" initiative.   » Continue Reading

We've been mulling over NACHA's announcement earlier this week that its board has approved a pilot of a new "credit push" initiative. Glenbrook's Jim Salters shares some initial reactions and raises some new questions about the new NACHA plan.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has posted a white paper titled "Beyond Credit Push" (PDF) that describes the strategy and rationale behind its announcement yesterday of to pilot a process that enables consumers to make payments and transfer funds between accounts after logging in to their banks’ online banking programs.   » Continue Reading

Digital Transactions provides more details about NACHA's announcement yesterday that it would soon begin piloting a new application to allow consumers to make payments and transfer funds between accounts after logging in to their banks’ online banking programs and compensate banks via an interchange fee for providing the service.

NACHA has announced that its board of directors has approved conducting a pilot to test online transactions in which consumers would be authenticated by their own financial institutions, and initiate private, secure electronic payments for consumers' online funds transfers, bill payments, and purchases via their financial institutions' online banking web sites .   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced that its PAYMENTS 2006 annual conference on electronic payments will be held from May 7-10 at the San Diego Convention Center.   » Continue Reading

Cornelia Wels-Maug of Ovum (UK) reports on the launch of Giropay, a new online ecommerce payment service created by the German savings banks, credit unions and Postbank that will be used initially by PayPal. The service will be supported by the three IT services providers behind Giropay - Starfinanz Software, Fiducia AG and GAD.   » Continue Reading

The NACHA Internet Council's next meeting is being held next week, February 28 - March 1, 2006, at Dana Point, California and will focus on multifactor authentication requirements and solutions as its theme. In preparation, it's prepared a "5-Stage Authentication Road Map" (PPT). See the General Internet Council Meeting Agenda (DOC) for a complete list of topics and speakers.

MODASolutions Corporation has announced SECURE-eBill, a new way to pay online that avoids revealing any personal financial account information to online merchants. The new service sends an email bill to the consumer which is then paid by the consumer using their online bank's bill payment service. The approach is reminiscent of NACHA's earlier Project ACTION initiative which ultimately wasn't developed as a production service.   » Continue Reading

Digital Transactions reports on NACHA's return item fee proposal which was not adopted based upon a vote of the NACHA voting members. While a majority of the members voted in favor of imposing the new fee, the proposal required a 2/3'rds majority to pass and only achieved 57% approval.

The NREF proposal would have required banks that originate ACH debits for client retailers and other businesses to compensate consumers' banks—the so-called receiving banks—each time they send through a transaction that must be returned because the consumer didn’t authorize it.

NACHA today reported that more than 12 billion ACH payments were made in 2004, a 20 percent increase over 2003. The growth was largely driven by the rapid expansion of ARC -- the accounts receivable check conversion application -- which experienced a nearly six-fold increase in volume to more than 1.25 billion payments.

Internet-initiated ACH payments also grew significantly with 967 million ACH debit payments worth over $300 billion initiated over the Internet, a growth rate of over of 40 percent from 2003.   » Continue Reading

NACHA announced this morning that it has awarded its 2005 George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award to Citigroup.   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg will be hosting an Online Merchants panel discussion at NACHA's Payments 2005 Conference next week in San Antonio. Allen's session is Monday, April 11th, beginning at 8 AM.

Panelists include Mary Kay Bowman (Amazon.com), Kevin Dasch (Dell), Nick Luna (Microsoft), Ashok Misra (RealNetworks) and Ben Quigley (AOL).   » Continue Reading

NACHA has announced the results of a survey of consumer awareness of accounts receivable check conversion (ARC).

ARC allows companies that receive consumers' checks at remittance and lockbox locations to convert them into electronic ACH payments, the same, safe electronic payments system used for Direct Deposit. ARC is used for consumer bill payments such as credit cards, mortgages, insurance premiums, and telecommunications and utility bills. NACHA estimates that in 2004 there were 1.25 billion consumer checks converted into ARC payments, and that at its current growth rate may reach 2 billion payments in 2005.

When read a description of the ARC check conversion process, 69 percent of the consumers surveyed said that they are familiar with the process. When provided with an open-ended opportunity to express any objections or concerns about check conversion, 55 percent said they had none.

Ivan Schneider writes in Bank Systems & Technology about Leonard Heckwolf's perspective on the the move to electronic payments. Heckwolf, who just completed a two-year stint as chairman of NACHA, is senior VP at JPMorgan Chase where he's responsible for the bank's ACH and retail lockbox business.

Steve Ellis, Executive Vice President of Wells Fargo's Wholesale Banking Group has been elected Chairman of NACHA's Board of Directors.   » Continue Reading

NACHA has published a Request for Comment regarding the proposed imposition of network return entry fees for unauthorized ACH transactions.

The fees, estimated to be in the range of between $13 to $18, are intended to shift the cost burden of dealing with such unauthorized transactions from the receiving financial institution to the originating financial institution. NACHA would collect the fees, retain 5-10 percent of the fee amount to support its risk management efforts, and forward the rest to the receiving financial institution.

NACHA requests that all comments on this proposal be received no later than Tuesday, November 30, 2004. Estimates are that this new fee, if approved by NACHA, would be imposed beginning in June 2005.

NACHA has announced a major surge in the growth of accounts receivable (ARC) e-check payments as major billers are rapidly adopting the use of ACH to truncate checks in their lockbox operations.   » Continue Reading

NACHA reported today that more than 60 percent of consumers are enrolled in Direct Deposit, up over 4 percent from 2003. Direct Payment (a pre-authorized debit that uses the Automated Clearing House network for recurring consumer bills such as mortgages, loans, and utilities) is being used by more than 50 percent of Americans. NACHA estimates that by using Direct Deposit and Direct Payment the average consumer can save more than $400 a year.

Jennifer Kingson reports in Wednesday's American Banker on eBay CEO Meg Whitman's Monday keynoteand an interview following at this week's NACHA Payments 2004 conference in Seattle.

NACHA has announced that its board has approved in concept charging a new fee that would be automatically assessed to originating depository financial institutions (ODFI) for every ACH payment that is returned for unauthorized reasons, and for every WEB and TEL payment returned for administrative reasons.

NACHA this morning announced its volumes of ACH transactions processed during 2003. A total of over 10 billion ACH payments were processed during 2003 -- growing 12 percent over the prior year -- including over 1.3 billion e-check transactions.

Jennifer Kingson reports in this morning's American Banker on a controversial proposal that NACHA is considering that would compensate receiving banks in the ACH system for their costs anytime an ACH transaction is returned to the sending bank.

As the use of the ACH for telephone and Internet-based payments has grown, a disproportionate share of returned items are falling into those two categories. The fee question is scheduled for further discussion at NACHA's upcoming Payments 2004 conference in Seattle later this month.

NACHA's Internet Council is holding its next meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco next week. The meeting agenda is available online.

eBay CEO Meg Whitman is the keynote speaker at NACHA's Payments 2004 Conference coming up in March in Seattle.

NACHA announced this morning that it will conduct a pilot of the Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service (EBIDS).

Under the EBIDS model, a billing company would originate a zero-dollar ACH transaction that contains a summary of a consumer's billing information in an attached addenda record, and enter the transaction into the ACH Network through its corporate bank. The consumer's financial institution would receive the transaction via the ACH Network, and present the billing information at its Internet banking web site. The consumer would enter the Internet banking web site, using the financial institution's existing logon procedure, and view the bill and authorize payment. The consumer's financial institution would then send an ACH credit back to the biller's bank, along with remittance information.

NACHA is holding its annual payments conference early this week. Watch this page for news from the conference. The conference schedule is available here.