Direct deposit, EFT and more — changes bring convenience

Whether your company relies on ACH for direct deposit, electronic funds transfer (EFT) or other reasons, you should know changes are coming.

This, after Nacha already made about a half dozen changes during 2021.

For example, on March 19, 2021, Nacha expanded its Same Day ACH hours. A third window was provided, allowing payments to be submitted until 4:45 p.m. EST.

Then, on June 30, 2021, Nacha added a permissible reason for a reversal – i.e., a “wrong date” error.

Both changes helped make direct deposit and EFT more convenient for employers.

What’s up ahead for ACH

So, what’s coming in 2022? Here’s a look at a couple developments and when you can expect them:

March 18, 2022: On this date, the dollar limit for Same Day ACH will be increased.

In fact, the dollar limit will reach $1 million. It’s been $100,000 since March of 2020.

The increased amount will apply to both credit and debit transactions.

Some possible areas in which the increased dollar limit could help your business are:

• business-to-business payments
• tax payments
• payroll funding
• insurance claim payments
• merchant settlement
• Same Day reversals of standard ACH payments, and
• business continuity – recovery from missed deadlines or outages.

June 30, 2022: Nacha plans to supplement its data security requirements by mid-year.

This applies to large, non-financial institution originators, third-party service providers and third-party senders with an annual ACH volume of 2 million or more transactions.

They’ll need to protect deposit account info by rendering it unreadable when it’s stored electronically.

Since June of 2021, data protection rules have been in place for the above entities with an annual ACH volume of 6 million or more transactions.