Give your customers a more manageable and less time-consuming alternative to paper checks. With ACH payments, there is no need to deal with lost, damaged or unreadable checks nor with depositing a check at a bank or a lockbox.
ACH, which stands for Automated Clearing House, is a network that facilitates electronic money transfers and payments between bank accounts in the United States. ACH payments allow businesses and consumers to send and receive funds securely and efficiently without the need for paper checks, wire transfers, or credit card transactions.
ACH payments automatically pull funds from your customers' checking or savings account. The funds can be collected at various points during the payments process—in the Virtual Terminal, your Hosted Checkout page, your Invoice Payments function or the Payment Gateway.
ACH payments generally process at a lower cost than credit and debit cards. However ACH payments have a slower processing time. Credit cards process in 2 to 3 days while ACH payments take 3 to 5 days.
The Qualpay Customer Vault allows you to conveniently and safely store your customers' ACH payment information for purposes of recurring and repeat transactions.
NACHA, the National Automated Clearing House Association, requires customer accounts to be validated for first-time web transactions. Our Account Validation feature does just that, greatly reducing the incidence of fraudulent ACH payments.
ACH and eCheck transactions can have lower processing fees compared to credit card payments, making them a cost-effective option. The ability to accept ACH and eCheck payments offers significant benefits to customers in a range of industries:
Unlike credit card payments, where authorization is given by the issuing bank electronically during the sale process, you must collect ACH authorizations directly from your customers and store them for two years. By collecting and storing ACH authorizations properly, your business demonstrates compliance with regulatory requirements, which mitigates the risk of disputes or unauthorized transactions.
Your business can start accepting ACH payments with Qualpay with a few simple steps:
If you already process credit cards with Qualpay, send a request to your Qualpay Sale Representative or contact Qualpay Support. Adding ACH payments follows a process similar to that of credit cards, albeit much shorter. We will ask you questions about your expected ACH payments and have you review and agree to pricing. Underwriting will review the request, and if approved, ACH payments will be added to your account.
If you are new to Qualpay, you can request to process ACH payments in addition to credit cards when you fill out your merchant application.
Read more about accepting ACH Payments in our ACH FAQ or take our Savings Challenge to see how Qualpay can help you accept payments more efficiently at a lower cost.
