
Remember, you may have many ACH transfers processing at once.


For an individual expecting a payment, the settlement time is an inconvenience, but for a business, it has much more importance. Understanding ACH settlement times are important because while the funds are transferring, you don’t have any access to that money. All told, this can make ACH settlement take several days. You bank could choose to place your transferred funds on a hold. However, that’s not the end of the story. It varies from same-day delivery to two days. Financial institutions have the ability to choose their processing time. The batches in which ACH transactions are processed get ran only three times a day and only on business days. While ACH is faster than it would be if it were paper-based, transferring funds between banks using this method still takes time. Payments processed through ACH payment processing are not immediate. If you use your bank’s bill paying services or set up a recurring payment with your utility company, the payment is processed this way. This is used in payroll as well as the payment of government benefits, interest, and annuities. ACH is essentially a batch processing system - transactions are accumulated then processed later in bulk.

Rather than use paper, everything is handled electronically. ACH payment processing accounts for roughly 24 billion transactions every year and moves over $41 trillion between accounts. When you receive a payment directly transferred from a bank account or a customer schedules a recurring payment from their bank account money passes through the Automated Clearing House Network, or ACH.
