ACH and Paperless Check E-commerce

Many people assume e-commerce is always done via credit card payments but that is actually a small amount of the market.  Many of our clients come to us to help them implement online payment portals that requirement payment via paperless-check or ACH transfer.  There are some huge advantages to these portals.

Payments via e-check, ACH, or paperless-check are typically subject to a single per payment fee.  Usually in the range of 50 cents.  However, credit card payments are subject to a fee plus a percentage (as high as 3%) of the total transaction.  Credit card payments can automatically be reversed and pulled from your account with virtually no way for our clients to dispute that the charge was in fact valid.  Between the fees and the burden of proof falling on the business making the charge many clients choose to build ACH payment portals.

Typical cases you should consider setting up an ACH Portal

  1. Your transaction amounts are typically very high (such as paying rent or purchasing large amounts of goods like a B2B transaction)
  2. You have a close relationship with your customers and they are willing to provide bank account information to you
  3. You want to setup reoccurring payments and avoid the constant percentage fee even if the amount is low ($50 per month to maintain a membership)