ACH Alert announced today it has reached an agreement with Green Bay, WI-based Associated Banc-Corp (NASDAQ: ASBC), to provide commercial accounts with real-time, actionable alerts when an ACH debit is presented for payment.
"This is going to be a strong product for our customers," said Doug Milway, senior vice president for Product Management at Associated Banc-Corp. "Blocks and filters are the most popular products we sell today and ACH Alert's new product can further enhance the value we provide our business customers."
"ACH Alert's solution offers Associated increased fraud protection without significantly increasing their overhead or adding to the administrative responsibilities of their commercial accounts," said Debbie Peace, CEO of ACH Alert. "We are excited about this opportunity to work with Associated Banc-Corp to provide their customers with the most advanced fraud protection available."
ACH Alert's automated processes provide real-time protection for commercial clients and automated return and re-credit processes for the financial institution.
"I think this can give us a competitive edge in the marketplace," said Milway. Milway sees automation as the differentiating factor of ACH Alert's product since it features: same-day notification, customer controlled accounts and same-day return if an ACH item is not authorized.
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, realtime 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 Associated Banc-Corp'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.