Next-Day ACH: same speed as card, more money for your platform

ACH payments typically come with a trade-off: lower cost, but slower settlement.

And for years, vertical software platforms had little choice but to accept that trade-off. 

Merchants waited 4 to 5 days (or more!) for their money to settle, and platforms capped ACH fees accordingly. Because you can’t really charge premium prices for a slow payment method. 

Today, that trade-off is gone. Rainforest now offers Next-Day ACH. 

Merchants on qualified platforms can get their money on the next banking day, same speed as card. 

What slow ACH actually costs your merchants

Settlement speed isn’t just a convenience. For many merchants, it’s a cashflow issue that affects their ability to run their business on a day-to-day basis. 

Let’s take a look at specific verticals and why ACH payment speed is critical to managing a business. 

Field services

A contractor finishes a job and sends an invoice, but they need to order materials and pay subcontractors before the next job even starts. If a payment takes an entire week to settle, they’re either taking on debt or delaying the next job. Neither is good.

Real estate

A property manager collects rent on the first of every month. The mortgage is also due on the first of the month, but when rent takes 5 days to clear, landlords are covering the gap out of pocket, every single month.

Liquor distribution

Some state regulations require distributors to collect payments from retailers on a strict schedule. Payment delays put them at risk of falling out of compliance, not because they don’t have the money, but because it hasn’t settled yet.

The above aren’t edge cases. They’re everyday realities for the merchants in specific verticals. For these merchants, fast settlement isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the baseline they need to get their business moving. 

Increase margins with Next-Day ACH 

Here’s the business case for your platform: when ACH was slow, you had to price it accordingly. For example, a platform might charge a flat $1.00 fee or 0.5% capped at $10. You couldn’t charge more because merchants weren’t getting more.

With Rainforest’s Next-Day ACH, the equation changes. When your merchants get their money the next day (just like card), you can charge for that experience. 

In some verticals, you can price ACH at the same rate as card. Since ACH costs you far less to process, that could mean 200 basis points of margin (or more!) you weren’t capturing before! 

That’s not a small number. In fact, across a portfolio of merchants, it adds up fast. In fact, if ACH is only 10% of your payments volume, that’s a 20 basis point margin increase overall. 

Offer a first-class ACH experience with Rainforest 

Next-Day ACH with Rainforest is built to feel like a single, unified payment product, not a bolt-on feature. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Same speed as card
• One onboarding for all payment methods
• Frictionless bank verification
• Unified reporting with platform-defined metadata
• A single daily deposit for all payment methods
• Penny-perfect reconciliation

Most importantly, you control the pricing, timing, and experience. Not your processor.

Unlock Next-Day ACH 

Next-Day ACH requires no additional engineering work. Like Apple Pay and PayPal, it’s built directly into Rainforest’s embeddable components and API. If you’re already on Rainforest, the path to offering this to your merchants is short and seamless. 

Talk to your Rainforest Platform Success Manager to find out if your platform qualifies, or reach out to us directly.

We’ll walk you through what it looks like for your specific use case. 

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