"NACHA Moves On Same Day ACH"

“Same Day ACH” is an interesting concept. Bear in mind that the banks don’t even trust each other let alone, without appropriate security, trust any unlicensed, unregulated, uninsured “merchant (of sorts)”, as eBay’s faux bank, PayPal, has conveniently described itself when arguing that it should not be subjected to the same prudential constraints that are applied to licensed financial institutions.

Interbank transactions therefore are aggregated for a convenient single “end of day” settlement between banks via their ACH system. The system is not “interactive”, nor need it so be.

The material point is, direct debits/credits processed via the ACH system were never intended as a means for parasitic intermediaries (or retail merchants) to ride, at nominal cost, on the backs of the banks’ existing systems and then take the lion’s share of an inflated merchants’ discount fee for themselves. Direct debits/credits are likewise not interactive and were never intended to so be; they were only ever meant to be a means of enabling regular debits or credits between entities, where “real time” was not necessary and where any risk to the paying bank was quantifiable and minimized, with the convenience of a single settlement between banks at the end of each day. And, multiple settlements per day still do not offer “real time” processing …

As far as retail merchants are concerned, they already have all they need to access the cheapest possible form of in-store “real time” payment: it’s called the “debit” card, and such debit card transactions could not be more nominal in cost, faster or more secure for everyone involved.

‘Former Walmart CEO Lee Scott is reported to have said, “I don’t know that MCX will succeed, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers.”’

Frankly, I don’t understand what Wal-Mart’s ex chief was complaining about; and now they are going to have to deal with eBay’s clunky “PreyPal”—LOL …