How Your Business Can Accept ACH Payments Instantly

Are you tired of collecting paper checks or paying high credit card fees whenever accepting payments from your customers?

If so, then perhaps you should consider switching to instant ACH payments for your business. ACH payments are a simple and cheap way to accept money available for every bank account in the United States. Since the ACH network is operated by the Federal Reserve and The Clearing House, it’s easy to use, and the network fees are much lower than most other payment methods.

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Let’s take a look at how you can leave behind cumbersome physical payment methods and high transaction costs by accepting ACH transfers instead.

Who accepts ACH payments online instantly?

So, what types of businesses should accept instant ACH payment instead of other payment methods?

Insurance companies

If you’re an insurance company, you should consider accepting your policyholders’ premium payments via ACH.

Your customers are typically on a scheduled and predetermined payment plan, so you should accept their deposits with a recurring bank transfer. Whether policyholders are paying monthly, quarterly, or biannually, you can collect their bank information once and charge them repeatedly through a pre-scheduled ACH payment. 

Brokerage firms

Help your customers keep up with the financial market with same-day ACH deposits. 

As a brokerage firm, you can improve customer experience with flexible asset management and comprehensive KYC checks built on top of the reputable ACH network.

Service-based businesses and gig workers

If you’re a gig worker or a freelancer, you may be used to depending on your clients’ existing payment systems for accepting funds.

However, when working with individuals or other small business owners, you must figure out your payment processing.

Bank transfers provide you with the flexibility you need. With ACH, you can improve your profit margins by avoiding high transaction costs. Additionally, you don’t have to keep track of physical bills or paper checks by compiling all payment information in one place.

Subscriptions and membership-based services

If you set up a recurring ACH payment, then you only have to collect customer bank account information once.

Your customers are a lot less likely to change bank accounts than they are to switch credit cards. So to simplify your financial operations, you can collect bank transfers and forget about the hassle of manually processing each recurring payment.

How do instant ACH payments work?

The Automated Clearing House (ACH) network is connected to all US banks and allows you to send and receive money electronically directly between bank accounts.

ACH payments can be either push or pull, which means that each transaction can be initiated either by the sender or the receiver.

While they were quite slow in the past, modern ACH payments typically take up to three working days to process. If you need your money faster, you can also opt-in for faster same-day or next-day ACH options for a slightly higher fee.

How to accept ACH payments at your business?

To collect ACH payments instantly, you will need to:

1. Collect your customer’s relevant financial information:
   1. Bank ACH routing number
   2. Customer’s account number
   3. Customer’s account type (checking or savings)
   4. Customer’s ACH Authorization Form
2. Enter all of the above information into your chosen payment platform. Typically, you can accept ACH payments through:
   1. Your Bank
   2. Third-party payment processor (such as Stripe or Square)
   3. Financial services provider
   4. Money movement API (such as Orum.io)
3. Enter the required amount into your payment platform.
4. Pick your ACH payment speed:
   1. Standard
   2. Next Day
   3. Same Day
   4. Wait for the payment to be processed and settled within your bank account

4 platforms that make accepting ACH payments instantly easier

If you want to accept ACH payments, you can set the service up with your bank or partner with a third-party platform. 

Third-party providers feature more robust payment options and reconciliation functionality, and there are enough vendors to pick from to find the best fit for your particular business.

1. Orum.io: Orum’s money movement API is fully customizable to fit your business’s needs. This solution supports all available payment types to help you accept money as quickly as possible without losing money on exorbitant fees.

2. Square: Square offers both online payment processing and point of sale (POS) systems for small businesses. While their options can be very convenient, you will have to pay a minimum of $1 for each ACH transaction with their 1% fee.

3. Stripe: Stripe is one of the most popular solutions for accepting business payments. They offer a no-code dashboard as well as a customizable API and support a variety of payment methods including ACH. However, as of October 2022, they do not provide same-day ACH or other fast payment methods like RTP.

4. Zelle: Zelle helps move money instantly between individual bank accounts with no fees for the end users. However, they do not offer a business-specific service and are not supported by many banks and credit unions around the country.

Process instant ACH payments with Orum.io

Orum.io is dedicated to helping businesses like yours move money quickly and easily. 

Our API can help you accept ACH payments from all of your customers while benefiting from the full array of ACH payment speeds and avoiding delays imposed by most banks or third-party platforms.

FAQs

Ready to get started accepting ACH payments? Get in touch with the Orum.io team to schedule a demo.