The Six Benefits ACH Payments Delivers

The Six Benefits ACH Payments Delivers

In today’s world of constant payment being made en masse, it is hard to know what payment methods you should be using. Paper checks are a huge hassle for customers and for large-scale businesses, surely we are past the forgotten days of tearing through a checkbook to scribble some values quickly before running to the bank to be processed. And whilst wire-transfers are certainly a quicker option, they certainly make up for their mach speeds with the astronomical prices that a transfer can rack up. Neither of these payment options are good enough for the modern business that needs to make large numbers of payments in a fast and cost effective manner.

That’s where ACH comes in. ACH is an acronym for Automated Clearing House, a digital network that enables users to transfer funds between bank accounts. No more remembering to cash your paper check at the bank, ACH uses ACH payment, AKA eChecks. These payments are more cost-effective, far more convenient, and safer than the traditional methods used. This article will detail six excellent benefits that ACH Payments deliver to the modern and innovating business.

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1: Security

In the modern world, security is a number one concern in everybody’s mind. Whether it’s fear of hacked accounts, big data leaks or lost passwords, internet security is the most important thing for most people. According to the AFP Payments Fraud and Control survey, paper checks are the payment method that is the most subjected to fraud. It’s no wonder that paper checks are so fallible though. Checks can easily be lost in the post or even by a customer or employee, but paper checks are also handled by several different entities along the way, making it exceedingly vulnerable to tampering. ACH payments, however, cannot suffer these flaws. ACH payments can’t be lost and cut out all of the intermediaries, greatly reducing the risk of tampering. They remove the risks that paper checks bring to your company.

2: Low Costs

Any business that accepts credit or debit cards will already be familiar with the costs incurred by processing these payment methods. Credit and debit card transactions tend to have the highest processing fees as it is a percentage of the transaction. Though paper checks have the lowest transaction fees, they are costly in terms of time and labour. This positions ACH payments as being the lowest costing method of payment for a merchant to accept. Though it may not seem much for one or two transactions, once many begin coming through the amount saved will be very obvious.

3: Less Human Error, More Time Saved

Humans are always the weakest element to a system, as human error tends to be prevalent in every sector. This often leads to payments being delayed due to mistakes or mismanagement, or checks being inputted incorrectly or even lost completely. For businesses that deal with a high customer base, this is inexcusable. ACH payments don’t rely on any human contact or input, done entirely over a network to make sure there aren’t any pesky human errors during the transaction. Over a long period, this will save a large chunk of time that normally would have been spent tracking down the mistakes and lost payments.

4: Faster Processing

Unlike paper checks, which take time to be delivered through the post, to be sorted in a bank, then be completed by a person, ACH payments are made online. This means that it bypasses all of the travel time that a physical check has to make, making the entire process much faster. ACH payments are also given preferred funding over paper checks, meaning that a bank will often process the eCheck before the physical one, dramatically reducing wait times.

5: Increased Convenience

No one in the age of information should have to carry around a physical, paper checkbook. Something that can easily get tarnished or lost, something which is, quite frankly, unnecessary and a nuisance. ACH payments do away with the physical book, allowing customers to make one-time payments or set up recurring billing from anywhere with a good internet connection. Moreover, you save time from going forth between post boxes and the bank and even save some money on ink and postage. A penny saved, as they say.

6: Recurring Billing

Speaking of, recurring billing is handled excellently within ACH payments. There are many companies out in the field that operate on a subscription-based billing model which can greatly benefit from what ACH payments offer. Often, subscription-based businesses face two major issues. The first is that the processing payments can grow dangerously high because of the instances of recurring transactions monthly. The second is that customers can forget to pay their invoices punctually, resulting in cash flow problems. With the dramatically low processing costs on ACH payments, the savings from processing fees can help supplement the times when customers forget to pay their bills. The effortless recurring payment system that is built-in to ACH payments also makes it easier for customers to simply set up the system and leave the billing to go through automatically, an excellent solution.

Conclusion

ACH payments have created a new format for business payments that may well take hold of all businesses in future thanks to all of the features mentioned above. These innovations in payment technology will allow businesses to spend less time on making payments and more time creating new, excellent products.