On 23 September, the Federal Reserve approved enhancements to the Federal Reserve Banks' same-day automated clearing house (ACH) service. The move aligns the Reserve Banks' same-day ACH service with recent amendments to NACHA's ACH operating rules and will facilitate the use of the ACH network for certain time-critical payments, accelerate final settlement, and improve funds availability to payment recipients.

NACHA said in a statement that the Federal Reserve’s support for NACHA’s same-day ACH Rule will ensure an ubiquitous same-day capability for virtually any ACH transaction.

The enhancements require receiving depository financial institutions (RDFIs) to participate in the service and originating depository financial institutions (ODFIs) to pay a fee to RDFIs for each same-day ACH forward transaction. The enhancements will be adopted by incorporation of NACHA’s amended operating rules into Operating Circular 4, governing the Reserve Banks’ ACH services.

The proposed mandatory interbank fee included in the NACHA rules will be set at 5.2 cents, to be paid by the originating depositor financial institutions to RDFIs for each forward same-day transaction.

The rule will be implemented in three phases, with phase 1 becoming effective on 23 September 2016:

1. ACH credit transactions will be eligible for same day processing, supporting use cases such as hourly payroll, person-to-person (P2P) payments and same-day bill pay.
2. Same-day ACH debits will be added, allowing for a wide variety of consumer bill payment use cases like utility, mortgage, loan and credit card payments.
3. Introduction of faster ACH credit funds availability requirements for RDFIs; funds from Same Day ACH credit transactions will need to be available to customers by 5 p.m. RDFI local time.

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