Accelitas and Nacha team up to show how predictive data, real-time insights, and new technologies are reducing admin returns and downstream costs for ACH transactions
The rise in ACH transactions brings incredible growth opportunities. It also comes with significant challenges—like managing returns, cutting costs, and staying on top of compliance.
And sometimes those challenges produce timely new solutions.
In the recent webinar A True Breakthrough in Bank Account Validation, fintech innovator Accelitas and payments industry leader Nacha hosted a review of the current ACH landscape, along with the new validation tools that go beyond compliance, helping businesses save time and money while improving the user experience.
Lead by Amy Morris, Sr. Director of ACH Network Rules at Nacha, and James Cook, VP of Product Management at Accelitas, the webinar put special focus on ACH returns, including the various causes and codes behind problematic ACH transactions.
“It’s very important for us to look at the reason why we're getting back a return, because returns have such an impact on both the sending party and receiving party,” Morris explained in the webinar, adding that the different situations often require manual resolution, making the return scenario costly and labor intensive for the business while creating friction for the purchaser.
Common Return Reason Codes include Insufficient Funds (R01/R09), Account Closed (R02), and Stop Payment (R08). Familiar to many webinar participants are the R03/R04 codes that indicate Invalid Account Number, including the “fat-finger” entry errors that prevent thousands of transactions.
In addressing these common – and costly --- returns, Accelitas has pioneered an industry breakthrough. The company’s Ai Validate Bank Data service now contains a patented proprietary technology that automatically screens bank routing and account numbers. By instantly eliminating non-valid accounts (those R03/R04 codes) at the beginning of the payment process, businesses can solve some of the most common reasons for ACH returns, saving significant time and money while improving the customer experience.
Cook noted how Accelitas customers are adding Ai Validate BD upfront to their existing payment workflow, enabling them to achieve higher success rates, process more accurate transactions and achieve higher success rates. By lowering returns they’re able to significantly reduce their downstream costs.
While Bank Account Validation (BAV) has never been more important, Cook conceded there is currently no “silver bullet” validation solution. There is, however, a major advantage for businesses that monitor the Nacha admin return rate and optimize their validation process. The “true breakthrough” by Accelitas includes the ability to instantly score 100% of U.S. bank accounts, eliminate R03s and R04s, get real-time validation, flexible numeric scoring, and simple REST API integration on a secure SOC 2 complaint SaaS API platform. Customers have told Cook that it’s been “very easy” to get Ai Validate BD approved through their vendor due diligence programs.
Admin returns are a “network quality issue” Nacha’s Morris reminded webinar participants. “We want to make sure that we are keeping our return rates as low as possible.”
Accelitas is a Nacha Preferred Partner.
