NACHA issues P2P ACH rules
Phase 2 provides clarity, consistency
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- Written by Website Staff
New NACHA rules that mandate how all person-to-person (P2P) payments must be sent through the ACH Network became effective March 20, 2015.
The rule provides additional clarity and consistency to originating depository financial institutions, receiving depository financial institutions, originators, and third parties about how to apply the NACHA Operating Rules to P2P payments since the first phase became effective in March 2014.
A discrete set of rules for P2P payments enable originators and third party service providers to implement internal processes and procedures for these entries to improve operations and customer service, reduce costs, reduce risk and fraud, and minimize exceptions and disputes.
The initial implementation phase permitted the usage of the new credit WEB P2P application by originators. However, ACH Operators and RDFIs were required to be able to accept these transactions on March 21, 2014. The second implementation phase means all ODFIs are now required to use the credit WEB transactions for all P2P payments via ACH.
Credit WEB volumes grew exponentially during the year after the P2P rule implementation last year, with more than 2 million entries processed by the end of the third quarter, culminating in more than 7.4 million credit WEB entries for all of 2014.
It is important to understand that the March 20, 2015, rule implementation does not contain formatting changes to the credit WEB Entry format; it simply requires all P2P payments to be originated using the credit WEB format.