"We are excited about what this means for our customers. This one-of-kind software from our partners at ACH Alert enhances protection and security for our commercial accounts and significantly reduces the potential for fraudulent activity by making it easy for our customers to make an immediate pay or no-pay decision," said Terry D'Amore, executive vice president and director of UMB Payment and Technology Solutions Division.

"ACH Alert's solution makes it possible for UMB to enhance their fraud protection services to a broader base of business clients without adding significant overhead to their organization and without placing yet another administrative burden on clients," said Debbie Peace, chief executive officer of ACH Alert.

Commercial, mid-size and small business accounts are all subject to the same limited return window of one to two days if they are victims of an unauthorized ACH debit. With this new software, real-time detection and immediate response to an unauthorized ACH transaction are available to prevent financial loss. Traditional methods practiced by most financial institutions in protecting business accounts include ACH debit blocks and filters.

The more restrictive ACH debit block results in a systematic return of any ACH debit that is presented providing complete protection against unauthorized ACH debits while also preventing a business from leveraging the cost-reducing benefits of ACH. The labor intensive ACH debit filters provide some flexibility but require a business to obtain the company ID that a trading partner will use in their ACH transactions. The business must provide the ID to the financial institution, which must then setup the ACH filter. ACH Alert's service eliminates both problems.

"The ACH Alert software grants the financial institution's commercial accounts complete control of the ACH payment process," said Peace.

The ACH Alert service enables clients to specify the method in which they wish to be notified, SMS text or email and the conditions that must exist to create an alert. Once alerted, the client can login to the UMB's web portal, view the ACH transaction and allow it to pay or return it. If desired, the client can identify transactions coming from trusted trading partners and add them to an Approved List, which minimizes the number of unnecessary alerts they receive in the future.