Software vendor Aptys Solutions LLC has upgraded a program to make it easier for banks to use the Federal Reserve's same-day settlement service for ACH payments.
Aptys recently added the ability to handle automated clearing house payments to its PayLogics platform. In doing so, it added features that will help banks identify the type of ACH transactions that can be settled same-day under the FedACH service.
Despite arguing for faster clearing of ACH payments, banks have been slow to adopt the Fed's service since it became available in August because of the program's limitations. For example, the service can be used with only a handful of ACH categories and only for debit transactions, not credit transactions. Also, the service is offered on an opt-in basis, so there is little guarantee that banks that adopt the service will be able to exchange transactions with many institutions.
"All of those issues will create some hurdles for this program to get going," Eric Dotson, an executive vice president of sales at Aptys, said in an interview on Monday. "One of the things we wanted to do with our solution is to eliminate the technology issue for the masses of community financial institutions that are out there."
The upgrades that the Rockwall, Texas, vendor made to PayLogics will help flag which transactions qualify for same-day settlement and determine if the transactions are eligible based on whether the receiving bank has enrolled in the service.
Aptys' PayLogics platform, which went live in May, is marketed to correspondent or bankers' banks, which can use it to help process payments and exchange check images for smaller community banks, Dotson said.
Aptys' current customers are Bankers' Bank, a subsidiary of Bankers Bancorporation Inc. in Madison, Wis., and Bridge Community Bank in Mechanicsville, Iowa, which uses the platform as part of a pilot with Nacha, the electronic payments association.
Fiserv Inc. said last month that it was upgrading its PEP+ software platform to help banks identify which ACH payment transactions qualified for same-day settlement. The Brookfield, Wis., vendor said Citigroup Inc. would be the first bank to use the upgraded version of the software this month.
