Same-Day ACH: Phase 3

Effective Date: March 16, 2018

The final phase of Same-Day ACH will become effective on March 16. 2018.

Beginning March 16, 2018, RDFIs will be mandated to make funds available for Same-Day ACH credits to the receiver by 5:00 PM at the RDFI’s local time.

BACKGROUND

On May 18, 2015 the NACHA membership, including NEACH approved Rules changes to the NACHA Operating Rules that would allow a ubiquitous faster payment system in the United States.

As a significant step in the evolution of the ACH Network certain provisions were considered. These provision included a 3 phase implementation timeline to ease the process for the industry as well as, a 5.2 cent per transaction fee paid from the ODFI to the RDFI to offset increased implementation costs including technical and business process changes needed to comply with the Rule change.

On September 23, 2016, Phase 1 of Same-Day ACH introduced two new ACH processing windows and allowed for the origination and receipt of credit entries for all ACH use cases except government and international transactions. Additionally, there are processing limits including a $25,000 cap per transactions and technically, entries with no effective date field cannot be processed as a same-day entry. This means ENR, or enrollment entries are excluded from processing for Same Day ACH.

Phase 1 & 2 also required the posting of same-day entries by the end of the RDFIs processing day. RDFIs could post earlier than “end of day”, but the NACHA Operating Rules would not require it until Phase 3.

RECENT CHANGE

On September 15, 2017, Phase 2 was introduced and allowed for the processing of debits in the new same-day processing windows. Also at the beginning of 2017, the federal government started the process to change 31 CFR Part 210 in order to allow Same-Day ACH to be used for same-day processing of government transactions.

MARCH 16, 2018