Payments - Is Fast ACH Good for Acquirers?

This week found me with 3 stories in payments that caught my eye.  Here is the first.

Automatic Clearing House or ACH is a way to move money.  Does making that faster help merchant acquirers?

Interesting read:

https://www.paymentssource.com/news/is-faster-ach-a-gold-mine-or-a-minefield-for-acquirers

Here is a snippet from the piece:

Same-day Automated Clearing House transactions exist, in part, as a first step in the faster payments initiatives taking place in the U.S. But are they lucrative enough for acquirers to add to their portfolio?

Even though ACH costs less than credit card interchange, the difference may not be compelling enough to win over merchants that are happy with cards and mobile wallets. But same-day ACH does have a devoted audience — delivering 13 million transactions in the last three months of 2016 — and a growing interest among government agencies and businesses.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0134 ACH and How it Works

Do you lay up late at night wondering how payments systems in the United States operate?  Wonder what makes them tick?

I thought so.

Here are three articles that tell a pretty good story about ACH and a little company trying to enable digital payroll for small to mid-sized companies.

http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective-part-1/

http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective-part-2/

http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective-part-3/

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0114 ACH Power

I pretty much read everything Karen Webster writes at PMTS.com.  She is back with more interesting writing.

http://www.pymnts.com/news/2014/the-payments-networks-next-real-threat/#.U2fZ8IFdU1I

Here is a snippet from that piece:

...

Innovators have fantasized about an ACH-powered network for like forever in an effort to reduce the cost of payments and break their dependence on the existing payments networks and the interchange fee structure associated with it. It’s what MCX is clearly interested in doing, it’s why PayPal wants its customers to register their bank accounts to their PayPal accounts instead of their credit card accounts, and it’s what every mobile app with a payments account registered to it wants too. The trick for these new potential “networks” will be how acceptance is priced. If it’s too high, and merchants won’t have any incentive to adopt; too low and banks won’t be able to monetize their precious asset – the bank account.

...

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant