Processing money online is super simple with ACH solutions. As a bank or a business owner, you can now offer your customers the option to pay their bills online securely. Nacha (National Automated Clearing House – The governing body for ACH transactions) operates on a strict set of rules called, Nacha operating rules. These rules make ACH payments secure both for the sender and the receiver of funds.
Processing Money Online Safely with ACH
Nacha compliance fortifies the ACH payment method with state-of-the-art security to offer excellent risk management for all the ACH network participants. With this compliance, ACH transactions offer the same level of protection (if not more) as credit card transactions carried out on Visa and Mastercard.
With a reliable third-party payment gateway, you can now keep track of all ACH and credit payments that take place on your merchant bank account with a virtual terminal. Although Nacha regulations are comprehensive and help financial institutions prevent fraud significantly, you can take these additional steps to ensure a safe transaction.
#1 Validate Customer Identities
Before you accept payments online, you must validate your customer’s identity correctly. You can do so by asking for a valid proof of identity (like a driver’s license). You can also rely on third-party identity verification services. Several payment processors take care of the identity verification processes at their end, so you don’t have to.
#2 Encrypt and Store Sensitive Data
Always prefer relying on a Nacha-preferred payment processor to save your data. Any data leak can harm both you as well as your customer severely.
The top payment gateways for ACH and credit card payments employ the latest and greatest encryption standards to protect their customers’ data.
#3 Validate Routing Numbers
Just like the customer identity, you must also validate the routing numbers of your customers’ bank accounts. In case of a failed payment, both you and your customer may attract a penalty. A few third-party processors help validate these routing numbers even before processing the first payment.
Nacha set a soft ruling to begin on March 19, 2021, holding all merchants processing ACH WEB to verify the bank accounts with the account holder as of March 2022. This ruling applied to new accounts only, grandfathering the customers who already process ACH payments online with the business.
#4 Validate Third-Party Service Providers
If you are a bank or a business owner, you will likely deal with hundreds of transactions every day. So, partnering with a third-party payment gateway will help you save time and money. However, you must be extra careful before relying on any payment processor.
Ideally, to be on the safe side, you should prefer partnering with a Nacha-preferred partner. These payment processors stay updated with the latest Nacha regulations and offer unparalleled services. In fact, some of the top online payment processing companies, go above and beyond. They provide an additional fully customized layer of security and data collection to their customers.
#5 Collect Extra Data (Available Through the Payment Gateways)
Customization of collection forms is one perk that is available almost exclusively to the banks and businesses that partner with the best third-party payment processors.
When protected with data from financial technology deeply embedded into the website when accepting payments, businesses prevent fraudulent transactions and deal with pesky customers who are keen on misusing the return policy on their products. These businesses easily show the banks and credit card companies that the customer had placed an order for a particular product/service by collecting and producing the extra information whenever needed.
#6 Double Check Data Entries
It is always a profitable idea to double-check your entries before processing any payments. You must be especially careful while checking the entries that authorize recurring ACH transactions. You should also check the authorization type and standard entry class code before processing money online with ACH credit/debit payment.
#7 Keep Hard/Scanned Copy Proofs of Authorization Forms
One of the critical roles and responsibilities for processing payments is keeping track of authorization forms. Even after completing the payment successfully, all network participants should ideally hold a copy of the authorization form handy. These forms handy will help you settle any point of sale or party service-related disputes efficiently later.
Conclusion
If you have an active merchant account, you can enable multiple payment options for your customers to help them process their payments seamlessly. You can partner with a reliable third-party processor to start accepting payments through ACH and credit cards or set up a new payment method. The benefits of relying on such a partner include:
- Faster processing
- Excellent customer care
- Extra layer of security
- Seamless compliance
- Additional data collection for reporting and analytics
Apart from these key benefits, some payment processors also give you an additional revenue share for each customer that you send their way! Therefore, you can help your customers while increasing your wallet share with each new lead. With the revenue share program, helping your customers can literally help you make more money.
If you want to learn more about ACH and credit card processing, speak to one of our relationship managers today!
Date originally published: January 26, 2022