Same Day ACH

Enabling Same Day ACH for your program makes it possible for ACH settlements to conclude on the same banking day they’re initiated, depending on the time of day they were submitted. The conventional ACH system typically takes 2–4 days to complete transactions, which can potentially disrupt cash flow and impede the speed of business operations. While faster alternatives like wire transfers exist, they often come with significantly higher fees, which can make them impractical for routine transactions. Conversely, Same Day ACH may provide a cost-effective solution with faster money movement, which may facilitate a new revenue stream for platforms, allow account holders faster access to funds, and help mitigate risks tied to transactional delays. The Federal Reserve's extension of ACH times gives businesses the ability to offer multiple ACH processing times throughout the day, while continuing to adhere to Nacha guidelines.

Same Day ACH is considered a premium service at Galileo and requires approval from a sponsor bank.

Same Day ACH use cases

ACH network users can benefit from Same Day ACH over standard ACH processing in a variety of ways. The primary use cases below provide a glimpse into its versatile applications across different transactional contexts and the benefits they may provide:

B2B

Invoice and tax payments – Faster payment of invoices on or after the due date.
New revenue stream – Clients offering Same Day ACH to their business customers can open up a new revenue stream by charging a small fee for Same Day ACH transactions.

B2C

Payroll – Faster payroll payments for hourly or temporary workers, and faster options for off-cycle payments such as bonuses or emergency payments.
Urgent claims payments and refunds – Quicker payout of insurance claim payments, disaster assistance payments, and other rebates, refunds and reimbursements.

C2B

Bill payment – Faster payment of bills on or after the due date.
Collection payments – Enabling Same Day payoff of past-due accounts.
Merchant debit payments – Faster returns for consumer payments.

P2P

Account-to-account payments – Movement of funds between accounts held by the same person at different financial institutions (“me-to-me”). For example, funding of a prepaid or mobile account.
Person-to-person payments – Quicker delivery of funds for transfers among family members or friends.

Program API functionality

To post a Same Day ACH request, call the Create ACH Transaction endpoint with sameDay: Y. Debit transactions sent with sameDay: Y and holdDays: 0 makes funds available immediately (sponsor bank approval needed for hold days override).

If Same Day is not enabled, the Create ACH Transaction API returns a same_day_warning indicating that the request will be processed as a regular ACH transaction, then advise you to contact Galileo.

• Program Limit Reached for Same Day — Per your program settings, transactions cannot exceed [value from ACSDL]. This transaction will be processed as a regular ACH transaction and follow the regular ACH processing timeline.

Fees

Galileo does not automatically charge a fee to cardholders for Same Day transactions.If you would like to charge a fee, contact Galileo for configuration. You can either establish a fixed fee for all Same Day transactions, or apply fees using the Assess Fee endpoint.

It is advised that you explicitly disclose the new fee, when it applies, and the processing times below to your customers to avoid charging Same Day fees to transactions processed as regular transactions.

Same Day ACH processing

When posting a Same Day transaction, keep these deadlines in mind. If a transaction is initiated after the last cutoff time, it will be included in the first Same Day slot of the following business day.

• Processing window — Identifies which of the three available timeframes a transaction will be processed.
• Cutoff time to send API call to Galileo — The cutoff time for Galileo clients to initiate outgoing transactions for the specified time slot.
• Settlement time — Corresponding time that funds are available to the receiver for Same Day ACH.

This table shows the timelines for the three ACH processing windows*. Times are in Eastern Time (but be aware that Galileo System Time is Arizona Time (UTC-07:00), which does not observe daylight saving).

_{*Due to Pathward’s and MCB's file processes, time frames may be different for Pathward and MCB clients.}

For fraud mitigation, ACH hold days are applied to outgoing ACH debits only, which dictate when funds are made available to spend in the cardholder’s account.

Same Day ACH timing

Same Day ACH transactions follow the same general process described for ACH debits in the ACH transaction overview section of the About ACH guide, with the key difference being when the Nacha file is generated.

Example flow:

1. The originator makes an ACH debit request to move funds out of the receiver’s account at 08:30 ET and provides the receiver’s bank account number and routing number.
2. The ODFI generates a Nacha file, batching all pending Same Day ACH records prior to the first cutoff time at the 09:00 ET, as coordinated with the bank.
3. The ACH operator processes the Nacha file and sends the transactions to the RDFI for Same Day processing.
4. The RDFI debits the receiver’s account according to instructions in the Nacha file.
5. The ODFI credits the originator account with the funds at 13:00 ET.

Galileo setup