Category: Education

7 Common Reasons for ACH Returns (and How to Prevent Them)

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Key Takeaways

  • ACH returns are electronic payment failures signaled by standardized codes that reveal whether the issue is funds, data quality, authorization, account status, or suspected errors.
  • Nacha expects originators to keep unauthorized ACH debit returns under 0.5%, administrative returns under 3%, and overall debit returns under 15% over a rolling 60‑day period.
  • Combining strong data capture, clear authorization, customer‑friendly billing journeys, and automated return/NOC handling within a unified bill pay and payments platform significantly reduces ACH return rates and manual effort.

ACH returns don’t just slow down cash flow—they quietly eat into staff time, increase risk and erode payer trust.

For office managers and finance directors who rely on ACH to keep costs low, understanding why those payments come back is the first step toward fixing the process, not just the symptom.

This guide walks you through what ACH returns are, the most common reasons they happen, how Nacha looks at your return rates, and how a modern bill payment stack can help you get ahead of them—without piling more work on your team.

 

What are ACH returns?

ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments are electronic transfers that move money between bank accounts using routing and account numbers instead of card networks. They are governed by Nacha, which sets the operating rules for the ACH Network.

In a typical ACH debit:

  • Your organization (through its bank or payments provider) sends a payment request into the ACH Network.
  • The ACH operator routes that request to your customer’s bank.
  • The customer’s bank either posts the debit or rejects it.

An ACH return happens when the customer’s bank can’t or won’t complete that transaction. Instead of the funds moving to your account, the transaction is “returned” through the network with a standardized return code explaining what went wrong.

In practice, an ACH return is the electronic version of a bounced check: you expected the money, but the bank sent back a code instead.

Two bank roles are central to every ACH return:

  • Originating Depository Financial Institution (ODFI): Your bank or payments provider, which sends ACH entries into the network on your behalf.
  • Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI) :Your customer’s bank, which receives the entry and either posts it or returns it.

When the RDFI returns a transaction, it uses one of more than 70 return codes—each mapped to a specific scenario and timeframe.

 

Why ACH returns matter for finance and operations

Even if they represent a small portion of your total volume, ACH returns have outsized impact.

Operationally, every return usually means:

  • Extra research to decode the reason and decide what to do next
  • Outreach to the payer to correct information or resolve a dispute
  • Manual updates to your billing or ERP system
  • Potential rework of payment plans or service status

Financially, ACH returns:

  • Delay or prevent expected revenue
  • Increase days sales outstanding (DSO)
  • Add overhead in the form of staff time and bank or processor fees

From a compliance perspective, Nacha expects originators to keep return rates within specific thresholds over a rolling 60‑day period:

  • Overall ACH debit returns: below 15%
  • Administrative returns (R02–R04): below 3%
  • Unauthorized debit returns: below 0.5%

These thresholds are significantly higher than typical, healthy return rates—but they’re clear signals. If you’re approaching them, it’s a warning that your authorization, data quality or risk controls need attention.

For office managers and finance directors, the takeaway is simple: you can’t treat ACH returns as one-off annoyances. They’re ongoing indicators of how well your payment processes are working.

 

What are the main reasons for ACH returns?

Behind the alphabet soup of return codes, most ACH returns fall into a handful of patterns that you can understand—and influence.

1. Insufficient or unavailable funds (NSF)

What’s happening: The payer doesn’t have enough available money in their account when the debit tries to clear.

Nacha distinguishes between:

  • Accounts that are simply short on funds
  • Accounts where funds are on hold because prior deposits haven’t cleared yet

In both cases, the result is the same: the debit can’t be posted, so the bank returns it.

Why it matters:

  • Direct impact on cash flow: You don’t get paid on time.
  • Additional staff time: Someone needs to decide whether and when to retry, and how to communicate with the customer.
  • Higher perceived risk: Repeated NSF returns from the same payer or segment can signal credit or affordability issues.

How to reduce NSF returns in practice

You can’t control your customers’ balances, but you can:

  • Align payment timing with common pay cycles where possible (for example, allowing customers to choose dates that work for them).
  • Use reminders before scheduled debits so customers can move funds if needed.
  • Apply smart retry logic (within Nacha rules) rather than manual, ad hoc re-submissions.

A bill payment experience that supports schedule‑pay, auto‑pay and configurable email or text reminders makes these tactics easier to operationalize, especially as your ACH volume grows.

2. Bad or outdated account information (administrative errors)

What’s happening: The routing or account details on file are wrong, incomplete or no longer associated with an open account.

Common scenarios include:

  • The payer closed the account after setting up ACH with you
  • A number was keyed incorrectly
  • A merger or bank change altered routing/account structures

These issues appear as administrative return codes (for example, “Account Closed,” “No Account,” “Invalid Account Number”) and are subject to the 3% administrative return threshold.

Why it matters

  • You incur a failure before you even reach the “real” risk of insufficient funds or disputes.
  • Your team has to track down updated details or alternative payment methods.
  • Recurring payment schedules can break quietly, leading to downstream collections issues.

How to reduce administrative returns

Practical moves include:

  • Using PCI‑compliant online forms so customers enter their own bank data instead of dictating it over the phone, which reduces keying errors.
  • Applying basic format validation at capture (for example, verifying routing number structures before you submit a live debit).
  • Taking advantage of Notices of Change (NOCs) from banks to update stored account details when institutions or account structures change.

A hosted bill payment portal that accepts both standard and custom file formats, supports ACH and cards, and tokenizes sensitive data helps you maintain data quality while keeping your PCI footprint manageable.

3. Closed, frozen or restricted accounts

What’s happening: The payer’s bank can’t allow debits from the account because of its status.

Common reasons include:

  • The payer or bank closed the account
  • Legal or regulatory action froze the account
  • Sanctions or watchlist matches require the bank to block certain activity

In all cases, the originator sees a return code that maps to “account closed” or “entry not allowed due to account status.”

Why it matters:

  • You may need to move the payer to a different funding source quickly to avoid service interruptions.
  • A cluster of returns linked to frozen or sanctioned accounts can prompt more detailed review from your bank or payments partner.
  • Repeated returns from the same payer or entity could indicate larger risk issues.

How to respond:

  • Flag accounts with repeated “account status” returns for manual review.
  • Make it easy for payers to update funding methods in a self‑service portal (for example, switching from a closed bank account to a new ACH account or card).
  • Work with your payments provider to understand any patterns in these returns across your portfolio.

4. Missing, revoked, or disputed authorization

What’s happening: The payer disputes that they agreed to the debit, or that it was carried out in line with what they agreed to.

Common underlying issues include:

  • The customer doesn’t recognize the company name or descriptor on their statement.
  • The payer revoked authorization (for example, cancelled a plan), but debits continued.
  • The date or amount of the debit didn’t match the terms they remember.

Nacha gives consumers a 60‑day window to dispute unauthorized debits on their accounts.

These entries are returned using specific unauthorized or “not in accordance with authorization” codes and count against the 0.5% unauthorized threshold.

It matters because unauthorized returned are highly scrutinized since they often reflect:

  • Weak or unclear authorization language
  • Poor recordkeeping (you can’t prove consent when asked)
  • Confusing billing descriptors and communication

If your unauthorized return rate drifts upward, your ODFI and Nacha may expect you to change how you capture and manage authorizations.

How to prevent authorization-related returns

Tighten these areas:

  • How you obtain consent: Use plain‑language authorization that spells out amount (or how it’s calculated), frequency and cancellation options.
  • Capture it in durable formats: online checkboxes plus timestamp, IVR or agent call recordings, signed agreements, or digital forms.
  • How you identify yourself on statements: Make sure your company or biller name in ACH descriptors matches what’s on your invoices, website and portals. Many “I didn’t authorize this” disputes stem from simple non-recognition.
  • How quickly you act on cancellations: [TEXT]
  • [TEXT]: Stop debits as soon as a customer revokes authorization or cancels a plan. One or two stray debits after cancellation can generate a disproportionate number of disputes.

A branded bill payment portal that keeps prior bills, plan details, and payment arrangements visible to the payer—and allows them to self‑manage or cancel—reduces surprises and gives you a clear record of what they agreed to and when.

5. Stop payments and payer‑initiated holds

What’s happening: The payer instructs their bank to block a specific ACH debit. This is usually coded as a stop payment.

Reasons vary:

  • The payer wants to switch payment dates or methods.
  • They’re disputing the amount or underlying service.

They simply feel more comfortable involving their bank than contacting you.

Why it matters: Each stop payment is both an operational event and a signal that customers felt they needed an external “brake” rather than working with your team.

Clusters of stop payments can reveal billing disputes, communication gaps, or friction in your cancellation process.

How to reduce stop payments

  • Give customers easy, self‑service ways to pause, reschedule or change payment methods—online, over the phone, or via mobile—so they don’t feel forced to go through their bank.
  • Use notifications ahead of large or unusual debits to surface issues early (for example, “Your draft for $X is scheduled on [date]. View or change this payment in your portal.”).
  • Equip frontline staff to correct billing errors or adjust plans quickly.

When payers can make changes themselves 24/7—via a hosted portal, IVR or text‑to‑pay—they’re less likely to escalate through their financial institutions.

6. Formatting errors, duplicates and data quality issues

What’s happening: The way the transaction data was built prevents the bank from processing it, or creates confusion about whether it’s a duplicate.

Typical scenarios include:

  • Invalid or missing fields in the ACH file
  • Entries sent to accounts that can’t accept that type of ACH transaction
  • The same payment information being submitted twice

Why it matters: These returns are avoidable; they often indicate preventable integration or configuration issues.

They also create noise in your operations by making teams distinguish between genuine customer issues and system-generated exceptions.

In some cases, they can point to broader process problems in how your billing or ERP system hands data off to your payments environment.

How to reduce formatting and duplicate returns

Ensure your systems generate Nacha-compliant files and stay current with rule changes. Partnering with a processor that maintains compliance on the gateway/file side can offload much of this burden.

Put duplicate detection in place—such as checking for recent payments with the same amount and reference ID before submitting a new debit. Apply basic account validation (for example, ensuring a given account type can accept ACH debits) before you send the entry.

A unified payments platform that supports flexible file formats, normalizes data from different billing systems, and handles ACH file-building centrally reduces the number of edge cases that lead to formatting-based returns.

7. Credit entries refused by receivers

Not all returns are debits. Credits, like refunds or payouts, can be refused by the receiver, for example when:

  • The amount is wrong or would cause an overpayment
  • The receiver doesn’t recognize the originator
  • The account is subject to legal restrictions

For finance and operations teams, refused credits:

  • Delay refunds, reimbursements, and vendor payments
  • Create additional work to research and correct underlying data
  • Risk frustrating customers or partners who are expecting money from you

How to reduce refused credits:

  • Double‑check refund and disbursement logic (for example, don’t create credit scenarios that overpay a balance).
  • Include clear remittance information so receivers understand the purpose of the credit.
  • Offer online access to payout or refund history so partners and customers can reconcile without extra back-and-forth.

 

What your ACH returns are trying to tell you

When you look at return codes in aggregate rather than one at a time, they start to behave like a diagnostic tool.

Patterns in your returns can reveal:

  • Data capture issues: High administrative returns (R02–R04) suggest problems with how bank details are collected, stored or updated.
  • Authorization and experience issues: Elevated unauthorized or stop-payment returns highlight gaps in consent, descriptors or customer communication.
  • Risk and credit issues: Concentrations of NSF returns, frozen accounts or refused entries can point to riskier segments or products.
  • Process and systems issues: Clusters of formatting or duplicate returns signal configuration or integration problems in your payment stack.

Nacha’s thresholds—0.5% unauthorized, 3% administrative and 15% overall—are designed as guardrails to prompt these kinds of reviews, not just as punitive lines in the sand.

If you’re a finance director or office manager, one of the highest‑value steps you can take is to make ACH return data visible in a way you can act on: by business unit, channel, funding type, and return code family.

 

How CSG Forte helps reduce ACH returns

In practice, office managers and finance directors don’t want more tools—they want fewer exceptions and less busywork.

Hosted, branded bill payment portal where payers can view bills, set up schedule‑pay or auto‑pay, make partial or over‑payments, and choose ACH, cards or digital wallets.

Omnichannel options—including online, IVR, text‑to‑pay and in‑person POS devices—so customers can pay when and how they want.

If you’re ready to move beyond “just handling exceptions” and start reducing them at the source but you’re wondering where to start, the most effective way to explore options is with a focused conversation.

Talk to one of CSG Forte’s payment experts to set up a BillPay demo and learn more about how to make it easier for customers to pay on time, reduce administrative and unauthorized returns, and connect bill payment, processing and analytics so you can see—and act on—return patterns faster

Why Embedding Payments Is a Risk Strategy for CIOs

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Key Takeaways

  • Embedded finance options mean money moves faster. This also increases fraud exposure, intensifies collections issues and can speed up customer churn.
  • Embedded finance solutions demand advanced real-time monitoring and internal controls to keep pace with accelerated payment flows and mitigate emerging risks.
  • As embedded payments become central to digital experiences, CIOs play a critical role in ensuring compliance, safeguarding brand reputation, and balancing customer convenience with security.

For your customers, embedded finance is simple: They hail a ride, book a telehealth visit or reorder supplies and expect the payment processing to just work in the background. No redirects. No duplicate forms. No pending messages that linger for days. The moment a payment feels slow confusing or unsafe, they drop the transaction—and often the brand.

That experience pressure is why product teams keep pushing more payments and account features directly into digital journeys. But the fact is, faster, more seamless payments can increase operational risk, making robust internal controls and real-time monitoring essential.

Embedded finance is transforming how digital businesses move money—but with speed and convenience comes new risk. Chief information officers (CIOs) must now balance customer experience with robust controls to protect revenue, reputation and compliance. And that’s exactly why CIOs now sit in the center of the conversation.

 

How embedded payments reshape risk for CIOs

Real-time and instant payments have reset expectations. Customers see funds move in seconds, so they assume everything behind the scenes moves just as quickly. The problem is that fraud, bad data and operational mistakes also move at that speed.

As Saurabh Joshi, CSG Forte’s executive vice president, highlighted in a recent article featured on TechTarget.com: faster payments compress your reaction window. If your systems cannot spot and respond to issues almost as quickly as money moves, a single bad transaction can escalate into a collections problem then into a real liability issue.

For CIOs, that creates a new risk profile:

  • Fraud losses materialize faster: There is less time to block, reverse, or recover funds before they leave the system.
  • Collections windows shrink: Failed or disputed payments escalate before operations can intervene, which strains both revenue and customer relationships.
  • Responsibility shifts inward: Even when you rely on banks and processors, regulators and customers increasingly hold your brand accountable for outcomes.

 

Building a resilient embedded payments architecture

To the customer, a one-click embedded payment looks effortless. And that’s the point. They don’t need to know that under the hood, your team is orchestrating:

  • Identity checks and onboarding flows
  • Risk and fraud scoring in real time
  • Routing across cards ACH wallets and emerging instant rails
  • Notifications refunds and disputes
  • Logging and audit trails to satisfy regulators and internal controls

None of that can slow the experience. Every decision has to be fast, consistent and explainable. That reality shifts the CIO role in three ways:

  1. From feature owner to ecosystem architect: CIOs are no longer adding a payment button. They are designing how money data and risk move across products, platforms, and partners.
  2. From uptime to financial grade resilience: Outages do not just frustrate users. They halt cash flow break reconciliations and trigger compliance questions.
  3. From security to shared liability: Once funds and sensitive data flow through your systems, CIOs carry more of the responsibility that banks have traditionally held.

If the architecture behind embedded finance is brittle, the speed that delights customers on a good day can magnify losses on a bad one.

 

How to build a financial-grade architecture

Solving this starts with treating embedded finance as a core capability, not a bolt on. CIOs need to anchor their approach in four areas.

  • API first connections: Your applications payment stack and banking partners need clean resilient APIs. That means high volume low latency orchestration plus strong observability so teams can spot and contain issues before customers feel them.
  • Real-time data visibility: You cannot manage what you cannot see. Streaming every payment event into a unified model lets risk finance and product teams monitor health adjust policies and understand where revenue or fraud is trending.
  • Modern identity and authentication: Embedded finance expands your attack surface. Strong KYC and KYB processes multi-factor authentication device intelligence and behavior-based controls all become table stakes.
  • Deep auditability: Financial events demand traceability. You need to know who did what, when and through which system for every transaction to satisfy both regulators and your own governance.

These capabilities do not make payments less seamless for customers. Done right, they make the experience more reliable while turning high speed money movement into something your organization can actually control.

 

Choosing the right partner for embedded finance risk

Most enterprises will not build this entire stack alone. The choice of payment partner now directly shapes your risk posture. A strong partner should:

  • Help absorb regulatory and network complexity across cards, Automated Clearing House transactions and newer instant rails.
  • Provide built-in tokenization encryption and fraud tools that can be tuned to your risk appetite.
  • Operate with financial-grade SLAs and clear incident playbooks that match the stakes of moving money.
  • Expose rich data so your teams can improve authorization rates, reduce chargebacks and refine controls over time.

Without that partnership technology teams end up stitching together point solutions that look fine in a diagram but leave dangerous blind spots in production.

 

From compliance to competitive advantage with CSG Forte

This is where CSG Forte comes in. Our platform is built for organizations that want embedded finance to drive growth while keeping risk in check. CSG Forte Embedded Payments empowers independent software vendors (ISVs) and platforms to deliver seamless, branded payment experiences while maintaining rigorous security, compliance, and risk management. With flexible partnership models, real-time data, and modular APIs, you can scale payments on your terms—backed by PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, and Nacha compliance.

With CSG Forte, CIOs can:

  • Support modern omnichannel payments through developer friendly application programming interfaces (APIs) that slot into existing architectures.
  • Protect transactions with available end-to-end encryption, tokenization and configurable fraud screening tools that adapt to emerging threats.
  • Gain real-time visibility into approvals declines chargebacks and disputes so teams can act before issues become write-offs.
  • Scale on cloud-native infrastructure with SLAs tailored for payment processing uptime, security and compliance.

That combination lets product teams experiment with new embedded journeys while technology leaders keep firm guardrails around revenue and liability.

 

Ready to rethink your embedded finance risk strategy?

If your team is already wrestling with faster payments fraud collections exposure or unreliable payment journeys, now is the time to reassess your architecture and partners.

CSG Forte works with CIOs and payment leaders who want to:

  • Reduce fraud losses and chargebacks without adding friction for good customers.
  • Improve visibility into payment performance across channels and partners.
  • Modernize embedded payments in phases so teams can move fast with confidence.

Are you ready to turn embedded payments into a growth engine? Contact CSG Forte for a tailored demo to see how we can help you manage risk and scale payments.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What compliance standards does CSG Forte meet for embedded payments?

CSG Forte operates as a PCI DSS v4.0 Level 1 Service Provider, the highest level of card security certification available.

It also supports Nacha requirements for ACH, maintains a HIPAA compliance program for healthcare use cases, and holds SSAE SOC 1 and ISO 27001:2022 certifications at the CSG level for broader security and controls.

Embedded payments built on Forte inherit these platform-level controls, while customers retain shared responsibilities for access, data handling, and configuration in their own systems.

2. How does CSG Forte help manage fraud risk in real time?

Forte combines tokenization, encryption, and VP2PE to reduce raw card data exposure, and offers Account Verification/Validate, Authentication, and Recovery Solutions to catch invalid or risky payment details before or after a transaction.

For higher‑risk or scaled programs, Payments Protection.AI and centralized monitoring help detect suspicious behavior and support efficient chargeback handling across many merchants and channels.

3. What partnership models are available for ISVs?

ISVs can engage with CSG Forte through Referral, Reseller, Payment Facilitation‑as‑a‑Service (PFaaS), or full Registered Payment Facilitator models.

This lets platforms start with low‑risk referral revenue, then evolve into PFaaS or full PayFac to gain more control over onboarding, pricing, and the payment experience as they mature.

4. Can I use only certain CSG Forte modules?

Yes. Forte’s platform is modular, so you can adopt only the components you need—such as BillPay/EBPP, Checkout, Dex reporting, tokenization, Account Updater/Verification, Engage reminders, or recovery services—without a full stack replacement.

Many ISVs start with core acquiring and bill pay, then layer in add‑ons like account verification, analytics, or reminders as their payment strategy matures.

How Public and Private Utilities Can Modernize Bill Payments

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Key Takeaways

  • Modern utility bill pay solutions stabilize revenue by combining flexible options, reminders, and multichannel access on a secure, PCI‑aligned platform.
  • Customers now expect branded, mobile‑friendly portals with self‑service tools like autopay, schedule‑pay and text‑to‑pay, plus strong privacy and fraud protections.
  • CSG Forte BillPay and related tools such as Account Updater and recovery services help utilities reduce declines and manual collections work without replacing their CIS.

When your community members turn on the lights or the tap, they rarely think about how their bill gets paid. You do. Late and delinquent payments tighten cash flow, stretch staff thin, and can delay maintenance or capital projects. At the same time, customers expect to pay every bill (utilities included) from their phone in just a few taps.

Modern utility bill pay solutions are how city and county leaders close that gap. The goal is not a flashy new portal for its own sake. It is a more reliable, flexible, and trusted way to collect the essential revenue that keeps essential services running.

Budget constraints often make it difficult for utilities to consider overhauling their entire customer information system, so leaders must look for economical solutions that enhance payment processes without requiring a costly system replacement.

 

Why utility bill pay is under pressure

Cash flow, delinquencies, and collection costs

For many utilities, both public and privately owned, too much staff time goes into chasing payments:

  • Customers pay month to month instead of enrolling in autopay, so cash flow depends on them remembering due dates.
  • Some delinquencies happen simply because a customer forgot or their card expired—not because they could not pay.
  • Staff spend hours calling, processing one‑off partial payments, and manually updating account notes.

Those activities have a real cost in overtime, burnout, and delayed projects.

Modern utility bill pay solutions attack those root causes by making it easy for customers to set autopay, schedule payments around their paydays, and keep stored payment information current with tools like ACH-based recurring payments. Having the capability to automatically refresh stored card details when issuers reissue or update cards means recurring payments can continue without disruption, which is an important lever in any recurring billing environment.

Customers compare you to every other online bill

Your customers do not only compare you to other similar service providers. They compare you to their bank, mobile carrier, and streaming services. Government payments research shows residents increasingly expect payments to be digital, fast, and easy, and security and convenience top their list of decision factors.

For utilities, that translates to:

  • A clean, mobile‑friendly portal that looks like your utility, not a generic third‑party site
  • The ability to store a preferred payment method securely
  • Autopay and flexible scheduling options
  • Email or text reminders and confirmations instead of paper‑only notices

If paying their water or power bill feels clunky or less secure than other bills, many customers will push it to the bottom of the stack.

Security, privacy, and fraud concerns for public utilities

Public‑sector payment leaders also worry about:

  • PCI DSS compliance for card payments
  • Card‑not‑present fraud in online and phone channels
  • Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network and Nacha requirements
  • Data privacy and limiting staff exposure to sensitive payment data

For many city and county leaders, shifting this risk to a specialized provider is just as important as improving customer experience.

 

Features customers expect from utility bill pay solutions

Modernizing does not have to mean re‑platforming everything. It starts with a few core capabilities customers already use elsewhere.

A simple, branded online and mobile experience

Customers are more likely to trust and use a portal that clearly belongs to your utility. A flexible, reliable bill payment platform should let you:

  • Launch a hosted bill payment portal customized with your logo, colors and messaging, including a unique portal URL and branded landing page text.
  • Offer both “Pay Now” (no registration required) and “Register Pay” flows so one‑time and recurring payers each have a clear path.
  • Deliver a mobile‑friendly experience that works across phones, tablets and desktops.

That gives you a modern utility bill payment solution without a large internal development project.

Multiple secure ways to pay: ACH, cards and wallets

Different households prefer different payment methods—and some are cheaper for you to process. Most modern bill payment solutions support:

  • ACH/eCheck
  • All major card brands
  • Digital wallets, alongside in‑person and phone payments (where configured)

Self-service tools: autopay, payment plans, and reminders

Self‑service is one of the fastest ways to reduce delinquencies and call volume. Customers expect:

  • Autopay so they can “set it and forget it”
  • Scheduled payments that match pay cycles
  • Partial‑pay, over‑pay and pre‑pay options, within your policies
  • Email and text reminders with links that take them directly to a secure payment page

The combination of reminders and flexible options is especially useful for residents who want to stay current but juggle variable income or multiple obligations.

 

Building flexibility into payment options and timing

Options for on‑time, behind, and at‑risk accounts

A one‑size‑fits‑all bill pay experience is not realistic. You need options that work for:

  • On‑time payers who should be nudged toward autopay and low‑friction digital channels
  • Occasionally late payers who benefit most from reminders, saved payment methods, and scheduling
  • At‑risk payers who may need structured payment plans, partial‑pay options, or short extensions within policy

Utilities need a highly configurable solution that allows them to decide whether registration is required, which payment types are accepted, and which options (like partial‑pay or pre‑pay) are available for specific programs or customer types. What works for a municipality’s fiber customers may not work for its water users, for example.

Reminders and account updates prevent avoidable delinquencies

Many failed or late payments are avoidable. Either the customer forgot, or their stored card information is out of date. A reliable, flexible payment platform helps address both by:

  • Allowing recurrent users opt in to email notifications and text‑to‑pay on their mobile phones, so they get proactive reminders and confirmations
  • Automatically refreshing stored card credentials behind the scenes when issuers update or reissue accounts

 

Make bill payments work harder for your utility

Utility leaders do not need another massive system overhaul—they need a bill pay experience that helps customers stay current while protecting staff time and operating budgets. The capabilities outlined above—branded portals, flexible payment options, self-service tools, and smart reminders—are now baseline expectations, not nice-to-haves.

For many utilities, integration means:

  • Daily files that update the CIS with payments
  • Flexible file formats that align with existing reconciliation workflows
  • Cloud-based reporting so finance and customer service teams can see payment status without logging into multiple systems

CSG Forte BillPay is designed to support that modern experience while working alongside your existing CIS, not replacing it. Paired with tools like Account Updater and recovery services, BillPay helps keep stored card details current, reduce preventable declines and reversals, and streamline collections workflows so your team can focus on higher‑value work.

If you’re ready to stabilize cash flow, lower manual collections effort and give customers a bill pay experience that feels as modern as every other bill they pay, connect with CSG Forte to explore what BillPay can do for your utility.

 

Frequently asked questions

1. Do we have to replace our customer information system (CIS) to modernize bill pay?

No. Modern bill pay platforms like CSG Forte BillPay are designed to work alongside your existing CIS. Many utilities start by exchanging daily files or simple integrations that update payment status, then expand as needs evolve—without a multi‑year rip‑and‑replace.

2. How does BillPay help reduce late and delinquent payments?

BillPay supports tools customers already use for other bills: autopay, scheduled payments, email and text reminders, and stored payment methods. When combined, these features make it easier for customers to stay current, even if their income or schedules vary from month to month.

3. What payment methods can customers use?

Utilities can accept a mix of ACH/eCheck, major debit and credit cards, and digital wallets, alongside in‑person and phone payments where configured. That flexibility lets you meet different customer preferences while steering volume toward lower‑cost channels when appropriate.

4. How does Account Updater help with recurring payments?

Account Updater works behind the scenes with participating card issuers to refresh stored card details when accounts are updated or reissued. That helps keep recurring payments running smoothly, reducing avoidable declines and the manual work that follows.

5. How does BillPay support security, privacy and compliance requirements?

CSG Forte’s bill pay solutions are built to support PCI‑aligned processing and help limit staff exposure to sensitive payment data. You can configure secure online, mobile and phone channels that meet your organization’s policies while giving residents confidence that their information is protected.

How Modern Healthcare Payment Solutions Improve Patient Satisfaction and Collections

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Key Takeaways

  • Outdated healthcare payment systems frustrate patients and cost providers revenue: Confusing bills, limited payment options, and inconvenient processes damage satisfaction, delay collections, and drive negative reviews and patient churn.
  • Patient-friendly digital payments improve collections without adding staff burden: Transparency, choice of payment methods, flexible financing, and omnichannel payment options make it easier for patients to pay, which helps providers get paid faster.

Picture this: Nine months after your medical appointment, you open your mailbox to a paper account statement. Inside is a return envelope and a perforated section to return with your payment. The statement offers no online payment option, so you call the office to pay by phone. The receptionist warns you that given that several months have passed since treatment, your account could be at risk of heading to collections if you don’t pay immediately. You reluctantly share your credit card information over the phone. Doing so leaves you uneasy about its security.

Healthcare billing and payments are significant pain points for patients. Unlike retail transactions where customers know the price and pay on the spot, healthcare is characterized by a delayed, fragmented, and opaque financial experiences. While the rest of the world has moved to one-click payments, healthcare is often stuck in the past, relying on paper statements and mailed-in check payments that are inconvenient for patients and delay cash flow.

Legacy healthcare payment processing systems can delay collections and damage patient satisfaction and loyalty. Across industries, 14% of consumers prioritize convenience in their bill paying, with Millennials (23%) more likely to skip bills that make it too hard to pay.

In fact, one survey of U.S. consumers found that 40% won’t pay their medical bill if they can’t understand the experience. Another survey found that 41% have left a negative review and 38% have switched healthcare providers due to a negative billing experience.

Modern patient payment solutions simplify and accelerate the payment process for patients and providers. In this blog, we’ll explore the shortcomings of traditional healthcare payment solutions and highlight patient-friendly payment options that overcome them. You’ll learn how to design effective patient payment financing plans that increase collections and how to measure the success of your payment solutions.

 

Traditional Healthcare Payment Solutions Frustrate Patients

Patients expect paying medical bills to be as quick and easy as shopping online. But healthcare bill payment experiences often fall short, leaving patients dealing with several payment problems:

Lack of transparency: Almost 60% of patients are dissatisfied with how providers communicate healthcare costs. Unclear bills, surprise charges, and opaque pricing make managing medical expenses challenging. Patients often experience confusion regarding payment processes, including where, how, and how much to pay. One survey found that 56% of patients find comprehending what they owe stressful.

Not enough choice in payment methods: Old-school payment systems—paper statements and check payments—just aren’t good enough for today’s patients. One third (33%) of consumers experience frustration when they are not offered modern payment solutions such as digital wallet or mobile payments. Most (87%) consumers think it’s important for their healthcare provider to offer their preferred payment method, and 24% would consider switching to a different healthcare provider if they couldn’t pay with their preferred payment method.

Inconvenience: Healthcare is behind other industries when it comes to payment ease, with only 8% of consumers indicating that healthcare payments are easy. Login and authentication problems, lack of autopay options, and being redirected to a third-party payment portal (that doesn’t work) waste time and frustrate patients.

Poor (or no) communication regarding patient financing options: About two thirds (67%) of patients reported being dissatisfied with healthcare payment options offered to them, according to a survey of U.S. consumers. Despite 78% of providers offering patient payment schedules, 45% of patients said they were never made aware of these financing options—highlighting a significant gap in communication and awareness.

 

Patient-Friendly Payment Solutions

Modern healthcare payment solutions boost collections and streamline workflows—helping providers get paid faster without adding to billing staff workloads. Delivering a convenient bill payment experience means eliminating friction from the entire process—from scheduling to final payment. Patient-friendly payment solutions include:

Upfront price transparency. Provide a clear, easy-to-understand good faith estimate of the patient’s out-of-pocket responsibility before the visit, not weeks later. When healthcare providers use embedded payments, patients know their costs and payment options before they sign the treatment consent form. This empowers patients to make informed choices about their care and reduces unpleasant billing surprises.

Payment reminders. Send timely, personalized reminders via each patient’s preferred channel, without overwhelming them. One survey found that 68% of consumers prefer an email notification when their healthcare payment is due, 54% want a text notification, and almost 50% like to receive a mailed statement.

Choice of payment methods. Increase on-time payments by allowing patients to pay by:

  • Credit/debit card: 54% of consumers prefer to pay healthcare expenses by credit card.
  • Automated clearing house (ACH): Often used for recurring billing, ACH payments have lower processing fees and failure rates than credit cards.
  • Digital wallet: Payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Venmo offer multi-layered security and greater convenience, ease, and efficiency than traditional payment methods.
  • Auto Pay: Allow patients to store a payment method for future co-pays or recurring bills.

Convenient payment channels. Give patients several fast, easy ways to pay:

  • Patient portal. Many (62%) consumers prefer to pay medical bills online, and 40% of patients would like to see their healthcare providers support online portal payments. Online digital [payment] portals provide a convenient, 24/7 access to:
    • View cost estimates and billing statements.
    • Pay balances via credit/debit card or automated clearing house (ACH).
    • Set up recurring payments or installment plans.
  • Phone (IVR or live agent). Interactive voice response (IVR) payment systems provide a secure way for people to pay anytime, anywhere, without an internet connection. Instead of entering patients’ account numbers, call center agents can generate secure payment pages (nanosites) on the spot and send the link to patients via text or email. Patients don’t have to log in (and remember a password they seldom use) to access the payment page.
  • Text-to-pay: Reach patients where they are: on their phones. By sending a payment request and link to a secure payment portal via text message, patients can pay with just a tap from their mobile device, without logging in to the patient portal.

 

Perfect Your Patient Payments with CSG Forte

Paying medical bills shouldn’t be painful. Healthcare providers can easily provide flexible, convenient payment options that promote prompt payment by using CSG Forte’s secure healthcare payment solutions. Our platform:

  • Allows patients to pay online, in person, or by phone using credit/debit cards, ACH, or digital wallets.
  • Supports recurring payments, text-to-pay, and payment plans.
  • Integrates with electronic health record (EHR) and practice management systems, simplifying administrative workflows and reducing errors.
  • Has Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance built in.

Are you ready to cure your organization’s patient payment ailments and improve collections? Schedule a demo with a CSG Forte expert to see how our healthcare payment processing software improves the payment experience for patients and providers.

Healthcare Finance Leaders’ Guide to Straight Through Processing

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Key Takeaways

  • Straight Through Processing (STP) automates virtual card payments from “approved” to “deposited + reconciled,” typically in about one day instead of 60–90 days.
  • STP is purpose‑built for healthcare, handling both insurer (B2B) and patient (C2B via payer portals) flows while feeding clean remittance data into the platform and your revenue tools.
  • The solution is designed for HIPAA, PCI DSS and HITRUST‑aligned environments, and runs behind the scenes without forcing disruptive changes to your EHR or practice management stack.

Healthcare finance leaders sit at a difficult intersection. You’re responsible for keeping operating margins in the black while also staying true to the organization’s clinical and community mission—and increasingly, those goals are in tension.

Margins are improving in some markets, but they remain thin and uneven. At the same time, more revenue is tied to patient responsibility, where collection rates continue to fall. The bottom line: every dollar that sits in flight instead of in your operating account adds volatility you can’t afford.

This is exactly where Straight Through Processing (STP) can change the equation—by compressing the time from insurer approval to provider deposit of virtual credit card payments from up to 60 days to roughly one day, and by stripping out the manual work and risk that come with mailed virtual cards.

 

The new realities behind your payer mix

On paper, payer mix still looks familiar: Medicare, Medicaid, commercial and self-pay summarized neatly on the income statement. But the cash story behind that mix has shifted.

High-deductible plans and rising out-of-pocket costs mean more of each encounter’s total charge now falls to the patient after insurance, not just to the insurer. Those patient-owed balances are far harder to predict and collect than contracted insurer payments, and many organizations are recovering only a fraction of what’s billed on the patient side. The result:

  • Less predictable cash flow, as a larger share of revenue depends on patient behavior instead of institutional payers.
  • Higher write-offs, with bad debt and charity care climbing as affordability challenges grow.
  • Greater sensitivity to delays on the “reliable” side of the mix—your insurer reimbursements must do more work to stabilize cash.

Against that backdrop, it’s no longer enough to optimize only patient collections. To protect margin and mission, healthcare finance, IT and operations leaders need to accelerate every predictable dollar.

Where should you start? The lowest-hanging fruit is payer reimbursements.

 

How virtual credit card payment automation accelerates cash flow

For many organizations, insurer reimbursements still arrive the hard way: Payers issue virtual cards for approved claims and send those card details through the mail, leaving providers to finish the last mile manually.

That “status quo” workflow looks like this:

  • Letters arrive at the practice or lockbox.
  • Staff open and sort mail, retrieve virtual card details and key payments into a terminal or practice management system.
  • Teams reconcile deposits and remittance data days or weeks later, often by hand and often across multiple systems.

On paper, it’s a digital payment. In reality, it’s a paper-era process with familiar consequences: extra administrative work, slower access to cash, more opportunities for fraud or loss and a wider PCI DSS footprint as staff handle card numbers directly.

Those pain points set the stage for a different approach: automating the entire path from virtual card creation to deposit and reconciliation, without changing how payers adjudicate claims.

 

What is Straight Through Processing?

STP is a payment automation process offered that allows healthcare providers to receive payments from insurance companies and from patients (via their payers) in about one day, directly into their bank accounts.

Instead of sending virtual card details through the mail and relying on manual posting, STP:

  • Keeps the virtual card model at the payer level: The insurer continues to generate a virtual card (VCC) for each approved reimbursement or patient balance, just as they do today.
  • Routes those virtual cards electronically to CSG Forte: The insurer sends the VCC details and remittance data to CSG Forte over secure, encrypted channels.
  • Automates virtual credit card payment processing and deposit: CSG Forte processes the virtual card and deposits funds directly into the provider’s bank account—typically the day after the claim is approved, instead of weeks or months later.
  • Delivers complete reconciliation: Payments and remittance information are surfaced in CSG Forte’s platform so your finance and operations teams can track, match and report on every transaction efficiently.

From your team’s perspective, reimbursements simply show up as electronic deposits with clean remittance data, without anyone handling plastic, paper or card numbers.

 

How STP fits into your insurance and patient payment flows

For healthcare administrators, IT and revenue cycle leaders, it helps to see how STP aligns with existing claim and billing processes.

At a high level, two flows benefit: B2B (payer → provider) and C2B (patient → provider via payer).

1. Insurance (B2B) payments

  • A patient receives care; the provider submits a claim.
  • The payer adjudicates and approves a portion—for example, $110 on a $200 visit.
  • The insurer generates a virtual card for the approved amount and routes it electronically to CSG Forte.
  • CSG Forte processes the VCC and deposits the $110 directly into the provider’s bank account, usually within one business day of approval.
  • CSG Forte’s web platform presents the payment and associated remittance data so your team can post, reconcile and report without rekeying or guesswork.

2. Patient (C2B) payments via payer portals

  • After insurance, the patient still owes, say, $50 (copays, deductibles, coinsurance).
  • The patient pays their balance through a payer-linked portal using an HSA/FSA or other card.
  • That payment hits the insurer’s engine, which again creates a virtual card for the $50 balance and sends it to CSG Forte.
  • CSG Forte processes the virtual credit card payment and deposits the $50 into the same provider account, with remittance data aligned to the patient and claim.

By centralizing both flows through STP, you:

  • Reduce manual touch points.
  • Gain a more predictable view of insurer and patient cash.
  • Create a cleaner foundation for downstream patient billing and collections.

 

From mailed cards to automated deposits: the STP advantage

Replacing mailed virtual cards with straight-through electronic deposits unlocks a set of concrete advantages across finance, operations and compliance.

1. Faster access to cash: Moving from up to 60 days of mail-based reimbursement to roughly one day after approval has a direct impact on days in A/R and days cash on hand. That acceleration can:

  • Smooth intramonth liquidity swings.
  • Reduce reliance on short-term borrowing or internal juggling.
  • Support more proactive decisions around staffing, capex and growth.

2. Lower administrative burden: With STP, your teams no longer need to open envelopes, key card numbers into terminals or manually match deposits to remittances. Our platform consolidates payment and remittance data so staff can focus on exception handling instead of transactional data entry. In an environment where revenue cycle and billing roles are hard to staff and retain, simplicity significantly increases efficiency for lean teams.

3. Reduced fraud and loss exposure: Automated virtual card processing significantly reduces the surface area for:

  • Intercepted mail and stolen card details.
  • Card testing fraud on exposed numbers.
  • Misapplied or lost payments that never make it to your deposit account.

By keeping sensitive card data within encrypted, controlled systems and eliminating physical mail, STP helps lower your fraud and loss risk while improving traceability.

4. Stronger security and compliance posture: CSG Forte’s healthcare payments capabilities, including STP, are designed to support high standards of HIPAA, PCI DSS and HITRUST-aligned security controls. Because your staff are no longer handling card numbers directly, your PCI scope is narrower and easier to manage and your audit trail for payer remittances becomes more robust.

 

Ensuring compliance and security in payment automation

For healthcare administrators and operations leaders, the value of STP isn’t just “faster payments.” It’s a set of strategic improvements in:

Finance and revenue cycles

  • Cash flow acceleration: Shorter reimbursement cycles stabilize liquidity and free working capital for strategic initiatives, not just firefighting.
  • More predictable revenue: With insurer and payer portal payments flowing directly to your accounts, forecasting becomes more reliable.
  • Cleaner close: Automated posting and reconciliation reduce end-of-month surprises and manual journal entries.

IT and data teams

  • Fewer brittle customizations: STP runs behind the scenes handling the virtual card processing; your core EHR and practice management systems don’t need invasive changes.
  • Better data quality: Consistent remittance data that is aligned with deposits and supports more accurate analytics and reporting across payer, specialty and facility.
  • Security by design: Centralizing virtual credit card payment processing with a healthcare-ready payments partner helps you align with existing security and risk frameworks rather than creating new exceptions.

Operations and practice leadership

  • Staff efficiency: Each remittance that posts automatically is one fewer piece of paper to touch or spreadsheet to reconcile.
  • Less burnout from repetitive work: Reducing tedious, error-prone tasks makes it easier to retain experienced revenue cycle and billing staff in a tight labor market.
  • Alignment with long-term automation strategy: Industry research continues to highlight significant savings potential from automating administrative processes across healthcare finance. STP supports your broader automation strategy.

 

Moving from 60 days to 1 day with CSG Forte

Healthcare providers can’t afford to leave cash flow to chance—not when margins are thin, patient affordability is under pressure and labor markets are tight. Optimizing patient collections will always matter, but stabilizing the predictable, contracted side of revenue is just as critical.

CSG Forte’s Straight Through Processing gives healthcare finance, IT and operations leaders a practical lever to:

  • Replace mailed virtual cards with automated deposits.
  • Shorten reimbursement cycles from months to roughly a day.
  • Reduce fraud and compliance risk tied to manual card handling.
  • Free staff from low-value, high-volume tasks.

All while working within the payer and portal ecosystems you already use. STP does not require changes to payer adjudication or your core EHR/practice management systems.

Ready to learn more? Connect with experts from our team to see how STP can fit into your healthcare payment workflows and revenue cycle strategy.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1: What is virtual credit card payment automation in healthcare?

Virtual credit card (VCC) payment automation replaces mailed virtual card letters and manual keying with a fully electronic flow from payer to provider bank account.

In the STP model, payers still generate a virtual card for each approved claim or patient balance, but they send the card credentials and remittance data directly to CSG Forte over secure channels instead of sending paper to your office.

CSG Forte then processes those cards automatically, deposits funds to your account (typically the day after approval) and surfaces the associated remittance data so your team can post and reconcile without touching envelopes or terminals.

FAQ 2: How does CSG Forte’s STP differ from ACH or check‑based payments?

Check-based and many “virtual card by mail” workflows rely on postal delivery and manual keying, which can stretch the window from approval to deposit to 30–90 days and consume significant staff time.

ACH EFT can eliminate paper but often still requires a separate process to match deposits with remittance files and handle exceptions. STP focuses specifically on virtual card reimbursements: it automates the last mile from “virtual card issued” to “funds in your bank with matched remittance,” so you get the speed and card-rail protections of VCCs with far less manual work.

Many groups pursue ACH and STP together—using ACH where they can, and applying STP to the substantial volume of virtual card payments that won’t go away in the near term.

FAQ 3: Is STP available for all payment types and payers?

Today’s STP offering is focused on automating virtual card reimbursements, covering both insurer payments and patient payments made through payer-linked portals (e.g., HSA/FSA spend).

Within that universe, you can choose whether to enroll only insurer (B2B), only patient (C2B) or both flows, and you can route them to the appropriate bank accounts.

STP does not currently turn every payer or every payment method into a straight‑through flow, but it gives you a high‑impact way to automate a large and growing slice of card-based reimbursements without waiting for every payer to move to ACH.

FAQ 4: What compliance and security standards does STP support?

STP is designed to operate within HIPAA, PCI DSS and HITRUST‑aligned security frameworks, reflecting the dual sensitivity of payment data and protected health information (PHI).

Card data and remittance information move through encrypted, access‑controlled systems; staff no longer handle card numbers directly, which helps narrow your PCI scope and strengthens audit trails for payer remittances.

On top of that, our platform provides role‑based access, MFA, IP whitelisting and detailed logging so finance, IT and compliance teams can enforce least‑privilege access and reconstruct who did what, when and why.

FAQ 5: Does STP require changes to my EHR, practice management or RCM systems?

STP is intentionally designed to run “behind the scenes” so you don’t have to rip and replace core systems to benefit from automation.

Virtual card processing and data normalization happen on the CSG Forte side; you can start by centralizing acceptance, settlement and reconciliation and then deepen integrations into your EHR, PM or RCM tools over time.

Many organizations use STP to stabilize cash and clean up remittance data first, then work with their internal teams and vendors to map that cleaner data into existing posting workflows rather than rebuilding those workflows from scratch.

Convenience Fee vs Surcharge: Choosing the Right Fee Strategy

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Key Takeaways

  • Surcharges apply only to credit card transactions in the U.S., and are usually a percentage fee meant to offset card acceptance costs.
  • Convenience fees apply when a payer uses a nonstandard payment method or channel and are often flat fees designed to recover the cost of offering extra options.
  • Both fee types are heavily regulated by card brands and state laws, so any program must be designed and monitored in partnership with legal counsel, your acquirer and a payment partner like CSG Forte.

Card processing costs have been rising for years, especially for credit cards and rewards products. For organizations that collect recurring payments at scale—such as city governments, utilities, property managers, healthcare providers and independent software vendors—those fees can add up fast.

That’s why it is no surprise more merchants and partners continue asking a version of the same question: “Can we pass card costs back to payers? And, if so, should we use a convenience fee or a surcharge?”

The terms often get used interchangeably, but they are not the same. They are governed by different rules, affect customer perception in different ways and carry different operational risks.

Choosing a payment platform that supports both convenience fees and surcharges—configured separately and never on the same transaction— gives you the flexibility to adapt to changing regulations and customer needs. This article will walk through how each fee works in the United States, when each can make sense and how to think about the right strategy for your organization.

 

What’s a surcharge?

A surcharge is an additional fee that a business adds when a payer chooses to pay with a credit card. It is usually calculated as a percentage of the transaction amount and appears as a separate line item on the receipt.

At a high level, a surcharge is designed to pass some or all the cost of credit card acceptance back to the cardholder instead of absorbing it into your operating budget.

Key characteristics of surcharges

In the U.S., surcharging is governed by a mix of federal law, state law and card brand rules. Several common elements apply almost everywhere:

  • Credit cards only: You can only surcharge eligible credit card transactions. Surcharging debit or prepaid card transactions is prohibited under federal rules that implement the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd‑Frank Act, even when the card is run “as credit.”
  • Percent‑based and capped: Visa and Mastercard typically cap credit card surcharges at the lower of your actual cost of acceptance or 4% of the transaction. In practice, many merchants choose a lower percentage to reduce customer friction.
  • State law limits: Some states restrict or ban surcharging altogether. For example, current guidance shows surcharges are not allowed in states such as Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts, while states like Colorado allow surcharges but cap them at 2% and require specific disclosures. The National Conference of State Legislatures maintains an overview of state surcharge statutes.
  • Registration and disclosure: Card brands require advance notice before you start surcharging and specify how signage and receipt disclosures must look. You must clearly tell payers that a surcharge applies to credit card transactions and show the surcharge amount or percentage before they commit to pay.

During implementation, surcharges are configured at the merchant location level, apply only to eligible credit cards and are passed in a dedicated field on the transaction so they can be reported separately.

Surcharge example

A county utility district allows residents to pay water bills online by bank transfer or credit card.

  • If a resident pays a $200 bill with an ACH transfer, there is no additional fee.
  • If a resident pays with a credit card, the district adds a 2.5% surcharge ($5) that appears as a separate line item on the checkout page and receipt.

In states where surcharging is permitted, this can help offset credit card costs, but requires careful compliance with state and card brand rules.

 

What are convenience fees?

A convenience fee is an additional fee you charge when a payer chooses a payment method or channel that is different from your standard option, such as paying online or by phone when your normal flow is in person or by mail.

Unlike surcharges, convenience fees are not limited to credit cards. They can apply to other methods like ACH or eCheck so long as they are tied to the “convenient” channel or method rather than to the card itself.

Key characteristics of convenience fees

There is no single federal statute that defines convenience fees, but a few patterns are common across card brand rules and state law:

  • Tied to a nonstandard channel or method: A convenience fee is charged because the payer uses a channel that is different from your normal flow, such as paying a tax bill online instead of mailing a check.
  • Often a flat fee: Many organizations use a flat dollar amount (for example, $2.95 per transaction) rather than a percentage, especially on higher‑value items like tuition or tax payments.
  • Channel restrictions: Some card brands limit when and where convenience fees can be used. For example, certain Mastercard rules allow specific types of convenience fees mainly in verticals such as government, education and tax.
  • Disclosures and fairness: Just like surcharges, convenience fees must be disclosed before the payer completes the transaction and must be reasonable in light of the service you are providing and applicable state law.

CSG Forte’s platform supports convenience fee models across channels, with split funding and detailed reporting to ensure compliance and transparency. They offer the ability to absorb the fee yourself, pass it through to the payer or split it, depending on your program design.

Convenience fee examples

Common U.S. examples include:

  • A city that normally collects property taxes by mail adds a flat convenience fee for paying online with a card or ACH instead of mailing a check.
  • A property manager that typically receives rent checks in an office charges a convenience fee for tenants who prefer to pay by phone with an agent.
  • A healthcare provider that normally accepts in‑office payments offers an online portal with a small convenience fee to offset the cost of hosting and maintaining digital channels.

In each case, the fee is associated with the convenience of a different channel, not solely with using a credit card.

 

Convenience fees vs surcharges: compliance and key difference

Both fee types help you manage payment costs, but they differ in how they work operationally and how payers experience them.

Who and what they apply to

  • Surcharge: Applies only to eligible credit card transactions and is directly tied to card acceptance costs.
  • Convenience fee: Applies when a payer uses a nonstandard channel or method (such as online, IVR or phone) and can apply to cards or other methods, depending on rules.

How the amount is set

  • Surcharge: Nearly always a percentage of the transaction, capped by card brands and in some states by statute.
  • Convenience fee: Often a flat dollar amount per transaction, sometimes a small percentage, subject to card brand and state guidance.

Where they are allowed

  • Surcharge: Not legal in every state and subject to detailed notice, cap and line‑item rules.
  • Convenience fee: Generally permitted when properly disclosed and structured, but some states define when you can charge them and how much you can charge.

Customer perception

Research suggests cardholders are more tolerant of clearly disclosed fees than surprise charges, especially when they understand that other fee‑free options (like ACH) are available. Many organizations find that convenience fees, framed around an optional channel, are easier to explain than surcharges that attach directly to card usage.

 

How to choose the right fee strategy

There is no single “right” answer. Instead, the better option depends on your goals, your vertical and your payers.

Scenarios where a surcharge might fit

A surcharge can make sense when:

  • Credit card volume is high and card costs are putting real pressure on margins, especially in thin‑margin operations such as utilities or public sector.
  • ACH or check alternatives already exist and are easy for payers to use, so customers who want to avoid the surcharge can switch channels without much friction.
  • State law clearly permits surcharging for your locations and your legal team is comfortable with the requirements.

Example: A utility that already offers a full ACH and bank draft experience decides to add a compliant credit card surcharge in allowed states to offset card costs while investing more in digital self‑service for ACH.

Scenarios where a convenience fee might fit better

A convenience fee is often the better choice when:

  • You want to recover the cost of offering extra channels, not just card costs. For example, supporting staffed phone payments or a high‑availability web portal.
  • Your customer experience team is wary of a fee that appears to “penalize” card usage directly, especially in sensitive contexts like healthcare or rent collection.
  • You operate across many states and want a slightly simpler legal profile than a full surcharging program, while still giving payers fee‑free options like ACH, mail or in‑person payments.

Example: A property management firm that typically receives rent checks and ACH transfers adds an online card option with a small convenience fee, while keeping ACH and check free. Tenants get new options, and the firm covers some of the incremental cost of digital and card acceptance.

 

How CSG Forte Can Help Build Your Strategy

CSG Forte supports both convenience fee and surcharge programs, but they cannot be combined on the same transaction and must be configured carefully to align with card brand rules and state law.

At a high level, Forte can help you:

  • Design a fee strategy that aligns with your goals, vertical norms and payer expectations across channels like web, POS, IVR and SMS.
  • Configure either surcharges or convenience fees at the appropriate merchant locations so that applicable fees are calculated and passed through consistently in the transaction data.
  • Report on fee performance so you can see how card mix, fee revenue and channel usage change over time, and adjust your strategy as needed.

Because CSG Forte works across acquiring, bill payment and payer engagement, you can approach fees as part of a broader payments strategy instead of a one‑off change at the gateway.

If you are evaluating whether a surcharge, a convenience fee or another approach is right for your organization, CSG Forte can help you weigh your options and design a program that balances compliance, cost control and customer experience. Our modern platform supports both convenience fee and surcharge programs, helping you design a compliant strategy that fits your business and customer needs.

Contact our team of experts to design a compliant convenience fee or surcharge strategy that fits your organization.

 

Frequently asked questions

  1. Can I charge both a convenience fee and a surcharge on the same transaction with CSG Forte?
    No. CSG Forte supports both convenience fee and surcharge programs, but they cannot be combined on the same transaction. Each program must be configured separately and aligned with card brand rules and applicable state law.
  2. How does CSG Forte’s convenience fee pricing work?
    With CSG Forte’s convenience fee pricing, the transaction is processed as two charges: one for the principal amount and another for the service (convenience) fee. The principal amount is funded directly to the merchant, while the service fee is funded to the processor, helping cover processing costs without additional billing to the merchant.
  3. What channels and payment methods can CSG Forte support for convenience fee programs?
    CSG Forte can support convenience fee models across multiple channels—including web, IVR, SMS, in‑person POS and kiosks—and for various methods such as cards, ACH and eCheck, as long as the fee is tied to the nonstandard “convenient” channel or method rather than the card itself and remains compliant with card brand and state rules.
  4. How does CSG Forte help me design and maintain a compliant fee strategy?
    CSG Forte helps you design, configure and monitor fee programs by:

    • Aligning your strategy with vertical norms and payer expectations.
    • Configuring convenience fees or surcharges at the merchant/location level so fees are calculated and passed consistently in transaction data.
    • Providing reporting through Dex so you can track card mix, fee revenue and channel usage over time and adjust as regulations or business needs change.
      You still need to work closely with your legal counsel and acquirer to validate compliance in each jurisdiction.
  5. How does CSG Forte help me design and maintain a compliant fee strategy?
    Yes. In addition to convenience fee programs, CSG Forte supports absorbed-fee models where the merchant pays processing and service fees instead of passing them to payers. This is common in scenarios where agencies or nonprofits want to encourage digital adoption or temporarily waive fees (for example, Mecklenburg County absorbing convenience fees during COVID-19 so taxpayers could pay online or by phone at no extra cost).

Payment Channels Explained: Offer More Ways to Pay Without Adding Complexity

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Payments aren’t getting simpler—they’re getting more varied. Your customers might want to pay online, over the phone, in person or through a link in an invoice reminder. And while offering more ways to pay can increase completed payments and reduce delays, it can also create new headaches if each option lives in its own silo.

That’s why it helps to think in terms of payment channels, not just payment methods. A channel is the full path a payment takes—from the customer’s experience to the technology that securely authorizes the transaction and moves funds. Before you add new ways to pay, you need to understand which channels fit your business, how they differ and how to implement them in your organization in a way that stays cohesive, secure and manageable.

 

What is a payment channel?

A payment channel is any way a customer might make a payment or anywhere that you, a merchant, might accept a payment. A payment channel includes a payment method, such as automated clearing house (ACH), debit card or a bank account, and the technical infrastructure that allows businesses and financial institutions to verify transactions and send funds. The infrastructure might include steps like securely sending card information entered into a website or checking the transaction for potential fraud.

Retail channels are a similar yet distinct concept. Retail channels cover different ways people can shop, like brick-and-mortar stores, catalogs and online shopping sites. Payment channels are generally related to these retail channels but are more specific to how people make payments. They correlate to retail channels but leave some room for overlap.

For example, at a brick-and-mortar retail channel, you might process payments on a physical point-of-sale (POS) system—a cash register—as well as on smartphones or tablets within the store. Your catalog might accept payments by phone but also integrate into an omnichannel approach. Customers could walk into your brick-and-mortar store to pay at the POS, or they could shop the catalog online and pay via online checkout.

Payment and retail channels closely relate to each other. Since you definitely want to create a cohesive, omnichannel experience, it’s essential to consider what payment channels you might implement. Some of the most popular options include:

Physical POS systems

Most brick-and-mortar stores have a point-of-sale (POS) payment system of some kind. These systems allow businesses to take in-person payments such as credit and debit cards, cash and checks. A physical POS can use more traditional technologies as a standalone system, but mobile POS systems are also common. A mobile POS uses devices such as smartphones and tablets to process payments, often with attached card readers. This option works well for businesses looking for easy-to-implement tech or for those on the move, such as field service providers.

Phone and interactive voice response (IVR) payments

Payments made over the phone can come in one of two varieties. The traditional approach involves talking to an agent to communicate payment details and share card information. An alternative to these contact center payments is to use IVR to walk customers through the process without needing to talk to an agent. The customer can enter specific numbers or say certain words to make the payment. Both methods are popular with service businesses and recurring payments.

Online checkout solutions

Online checkouts can come in many forms for everything from e-commerce and subscription services to rent and utility bills. They might integrate features for managing shopping carts, storing the customer’s information for next time or setting up automatic payments. Supported payment methods might include credit and debit cards and Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. ACH is the system used to electronically transfer funds between bank accounts and process electronic checks in the United States.

Contactless payments

Many cards now have integrated chips with near-field communication (NFC) technology. A compatible POS system allows customers to tap their credit or debit card to make payments. Digital wallets like PayPal and Apple Pay can also use NFC technology to facilitate card payments and bank transfers. You’ll find these wallets integrated with online checkouts and supported by physical POS systems, which can collect payment data wirelessly from a user’s smartphone or watch.

 

How offering multiple payment channels benefits your business

Person paying with a phone on a point-of-sale device. Caption: In a competitive landscape, offering convenience and choice can make a big difference in where your customers shop.

In a competitive landscape, offering convenience and choice can make a big difference in where your customers shop. Credit cards and debit cards are by far the most popular payment methods at the point of sale, but analysts expect digital wallets to become much more common. However, payment preferences can vary widely by industry, geography, customer demographics and other characteristics.

By offering a range of options, businesses and their customers can reap several benefits, including:

Better customer experience

With more choices, customers can make payments how they want. These methods often come with unique advantages. Cash doesn’t have any processing requirements or fees, while credit cards can offer rewards and fraud protection. Online or over-the-phone payments are convenient and fast.

With multiple options, customers can pick the right one for their situation. From a business perspective, a better customer experience from payment channels can make it more likely someone will make a purchase with you or reduce the likelihood that their payment will be late.

More sales opportunities

Different payment channels can create new sales opportunities. Taking online payments can help a local shop reach customers worldwide, while a POS could help a storefront business take payments from customers who don’t typically carry cash.

Flexible payment options can also help customers make payments on time, allowing businesses to maintain steady cash flow.

Additional features

Some payment channels support useful features. For example, online checkout systems can help customers set up automatic recurring payments, which you can’t do with cash payments. Online checkouts also offer branding opportunities. You could even create email or SMS text message payment channels by including a link to an online payment platform in emails and SMS text notifications.

 

Security and compliance considerations

Protecting customer information and meeting regulations is crucial for any organization collecting payments. Most payment channels use different technological infrastructures, so you’ll need to pay attention to security and compliance requirements. Make sure your solutions follow best practices for technology standards and protocols, like end-to-end encryption, tokenization and fraud prevention methods.

Depending on your industry and the payment channels you use, look for solutions that meet the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Working with a member of the Nacha Preferred Partner Program can help ensure security with ACH transactions, too.

 

How to set up multiple payment channels

Setting up multiple payment channels might sound complex, but a merchant service provider and a unified payment platform simplify the process. Here at CSG Forte, we use the Dex Payments Platform, a comprehensive solution for payment processing. Dex integrates with various online, in-person and phone payment systems for simplified management and various tools to meet customer needs.

Your team can integrate this highly customizable platform with application programming interfaces (APIs), or you can work with our experienced team to implement channels for your business. We can also help with hardware requirements.

CSG Forte offers full payment processing support for the following channels:

  • Physical POS: We can help build a physical POS solution and supply the tech, including card readers and our Virtual Terminal that turns existing computers into instant workstations. Our POS systems are PCI-validated with point-to-point encryption for extensive security.
  • Phone/IVR: Our phone and IVR services come with your own toll-free number and script-building assistance. Touch-tone and speech-recognition technology can help you build a great customer experience. We also have solutions to streamline and secure payments received through your contact center.
  • Online payments: Our robust online checkout solution is smart, speedy and stocked with options. Accept credit and debit cards and ACH payments, and allow customers to pay through your app or other platforms through robust APIs.

You can accept both credit cards and electronic checks on any of these channels, and each channel comes with our cloud-based Virtual Terminal for transaction management and our powerful payment gateway services. All of the reports funnel into the Virtual Terminal, so you don’t have to worry about piecing things together on your own.

These payment channels don’t necessarily have to correlate only to retail, as well. For example, government agencies could implement online payments to accept taxes on the web and leverage a POS system for in-office payment collection.

 

CSG Forte’s payment channel solutions for your business

Smiling man on a laptop. Caption: Payment channel solutions for your business

Whatever your industry, diverse payment channels can transform your approach. Expand options for your customers and your business with simplified payment processing. And what’s easier than setting up all of your channels with one company? Get started with CSG Forte today.

An Insurance Leader’s Guide to Reducing Payment Declines

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Key Takeaways

  • Insurance payment declines are a customer experience, retention and compliance problem—not just a billing issue—because failed premiums can quickly lead to policy lapses and involuntary churn.
  • The most effective strategies combine prevention (reminders, ACH, account verification, Account Updater) with smart, mostly invisible recovery tactics and empathetic communication when policyholders must get involved.
  • Modern platforms paired with powerful tools help insurers reduce declines, cut manual work and protect premium revenue across the entire policyholder journey.

Payment failures are problematic for all businesses, but the consequences are particularly harmful for insurance companies and policyholders. Insurance payment declines can cause policy cancellations that decrease revenue and leave customers unprotected from catastrophic events.

Even if the policy is later reinstated, policyholders fed up with payment friction may switch insurers, reducing customer lifetime value. To protect and retain clients and revenue, insurers need effective strategies—and a modern online payments platform—to reduce insurance premium payment declines.

 

Why insurance payment declines hurt more than you think

When insurance premium payments fail, they set off a chain reaction of customer frustration, operational headaches and financial losses that erode an insurer’s profitability.

Payment friction damages customer experience: In an industry where “peace of mind” is the core product, online payment friction is particularly damaging because it forces the policyholder to do the heavy lifting during a high-stress moment. When communication regarding payment declines is vague (“payment error”), impersonal and arrives a week later by snail mail, customers must scramble to identify and fix the problem before the grace period ends. Paying bills is often the only contact policyholders have with the insurer, so a stressful payment experience may be the deciding factor about whether to switch providers.

Lapsed coverage leads to churn and revenue loss: If an insurance premium payment is declined and the customer fails to remedy the situation within the grace period, the policy is canceled and insurance coverage terminates. This involuntary churn results in a complete loss of future revenue from that customer, decreasing investment income from float. Even if the customer’s policy is reinstated, the frustration and hassles may send the policyholder shopping for another carrier (i.e., voluntary churn).

Payment failures increase operational expenses: Tending to insurance payment declines requires costly internal processes:

  • Policyholder communications (i.e., dunning management)
  • Payment retries
  • Reinstatement

Compliance risk: In many states, property and casualty insurers have specific regulatory requirements for notifying customers before policy cancellation. Failed payments complicate this process, increasing the risk of compliance errors and potential regulatory penalties.

 

Top causes of premium payment failures

Payment declines may be due to policyholder issues, technical/system failures, or fraud/risk flags:

  • Insufficient funds: The policyholder’s bank account doesn’t have enough money to cover the premium, or the premium exceeds the available credit card limit.
  • Expired or cancelled card: When the card used for recurring payments is no longer valid, the premium payment will fail. The typical life span of a credit card is about three years before it expires or becomes lost or stolen.
  • Invalid payment data (technical error): The payment information (e.g., bank account or routing number, credit card number, CVV or expiration date) was entered incorrectly by the customer or contains a technical error that prevents the payment gateway from processing it.
  • Technical glitches: Issues arise with the payment gateway, processor or card network.
  • Fraud detection/false declines: The issuing bank’s fraud prevention system flags a legitimate transaction as suspicious.

 

Best practices to reduce declines and retain policyholders

The best way to retain clients is to deliver a more convenient online payment experience. Follow these best practices to improve CX and prevent payment declines:

Send automated payment reminders well before the premium due date. If the reminder arrives the day before payment is due, customers may not have enough time to be sure there’s enough money in their account to cover the premium.

Encourage policyholders to pay via automated clearing house (ACH) instead of credit card. Because bank accounts are typically held for 14 years (meaning account numbers don’t change as often as credit card numbers), ACH transactions have lower decline rates.

Offer flexible payment plans and due dates. Make insurance premiums more budget-friendly by allowing policyholders to spread out payments (e.g., monthly, quarterly or biannual payments). Offer paycheck aligned plans that match customers’ pay dates.

Use a card account updater service. An account updater service automatically updates expired, replaced or reissued card credentials with the card network, eliminating the need for customers to manually refresh their payment details.

Implement an account verification solution. Verify the bank account and routing number for ACH transactions to reduce manual errors at the point of capture and reduce bad checks prior to processing.

Take advantage of payment orchestration. Use a system that intelligently routes payment attempts through different processors or networks if an initial attempt fails, sometimes leading to a successful transaction.

 

How to recover failed payments without damaging relationships

Payment declines may still occur, despite your best efforts to prevent them. When they do, you need to tread lightly to resolve the problem without pushing customers away.

Start with “invisible” recovery tactics. The best way to preserve a relationship is to fix the payment issue before the customer even realizes there is a problem.

Use a payment recovery service. When insurance premium payment fails due to insufficient funds, a payment recovery service automates and optimizes the process of reattempting and collecting payment, without the customer’s involvement.

Apply intelligent retry logic. The best recovery systems employ a machine-learning-driven process that determines the optimal moment to re-attempt a declined transaction. For example, debit card retries may be most successful at 12:01 AM, when banks refresh daily balances. Or the system may use payday logic, retrying payments on the 1st or 15th of the month.

  • Remove friction. If you must involve policyholders in recovery efforts, communicate promptly, transparently and empathetically—and make it easy for the customer to fix the payment problem.
  • Issue real-time payment decline alerts. Instantly notify customers via their preferred channel (phone, text or email) when a payment fails, explaining the reason (e.g., “Card declined due to insufficient funds”). Keep the tone friendly and supportive.
  • Include a one-click payment link. Make it simple for policyholders to update their payment method or make a one-time payment, without having to log in to the portal.
  • Allow partial premium payments to prevent policy lapses. Personalized messages and solutions are more effective than generic outreach.

 

CSG Forte: the best policy for insurance payment success

A modern online payment processing platform for insurers simplifies payments and revenue management. CSG Forte is your one-stop solution for accepting payments in person, by phone or online. Payment validation, card updater and NSF Check Recovery Services reduce insurance payment declines, boosting retention and revenue.

CSG Xponent, our customer journey management solution, improves policyholder CX by sending timely, personalized messages—such as payment reminders and claims status updates—via each customer’s preferred channel.

Ready to simplify payments? Let’s chat—reach out to our Forte team today and discover how we can help your business boost retention and revenue.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the most common reasons insurance premium payments fail?

The main drivers are:

  • Insufficient funds or credit limit on the policyholder’s account when the premium is due.
  • Expired, replaced or cancelled cards used for recurring payments.
  • Incorrect or incomplete payment details, such as mistyped account or routing numbers, card number, CVV or expiration date.
  • Technical issues at the gateway, processor or network level that temporarily prevent authorization.
  • Fraud/risk rules and false positives, where the issuer flags a legitimate transaction as suspicious and declines it.

2. How does Account Updater reduce card declines for insurers?

Account Updater automatically refreshes stored card details for participating Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards when those cards are reissued, updated or closed. Instead of a recurring premium failing because the old card on file has expired or been replaced, CSG Forte:

  • receives updated card data from the card networks,
  • matches it to tokenized payment methods on file, and
  • updates the token with the new account number or expiration date.

This reduces declines due to outdated card credentials and lets many recurring premiums continue without the policyholder needing to call in or log into a portal to update their card.

3. Can CSG Forte BillPay integrate with my existing policy admin system?

Yes. CSG Forte BillPay is designed to sit alongside your existing policy admin, billing and claims platforms, not replace them. Insurers can:

  • use REST APIs and/or file-based integrations to exchange data,
  • synchronize balances, payment status and settlement details, and
  • feed reconciliation files and reports into downstream finance and policy systems.

The result is a more modern payment experience without a rip-and-replace of your core insurance systems.

4. What payment methods does CSG Forte support for insurance premiums?

CSG Forte supports a broad mix of payment methods insurers typically need, including:

  • credit and debit cards,
  • ACH/eCheck from bank accounts, and
  • leading digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo.

These can be offered across channels like web and mobile portals, IVR and call center payments, text-to-pay and in-person or agent-assisted payments, so policyholders can pay in the way that’s most convenient to them.

5. How can insurers track and improve payment recovery rates?

To manage and improve recovery, insurers should:

  • Track decline and failure rates by channel and payment method (card vs. ACH).
  • Measure recovery rate by value (how much failed premium revenue is successfully collected) and write-off percentage (what’s never recovered).
  • Monitor time to recovery (TTR)—the days from first decline to successful collection.
  • Compare automatic vs. manual recovery, aiming to shift more recovery to automated tools (Account Updater, intelligent retries, recovery services) and reduce labor-intensive outreach.

Improvement typically comes from:

  • strengthening prevention (payment reminders, ACH incentives, account verification, Account Updater),
  • implementing smart retry and recovery logic, and
  • using analytics to refine dunning strategies and channel mix over time.

What’s the Fastest Way to Transfer Money Between Banks? “Instant” Options, Compared.

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Key takeaways

  • “Instant” isn’t one thing. Depending on the method, it can mean real-time settlement, same-business-day clearing or immediate confirmation with settlement later—so define what “fast” needs to mean for your use case.
  • The best bank-to-bank transfer method is a tradeoff between speed, cost and control. Same Day ACH and wires can be fast, but fees, cutoffs and limits (like Same Day ACH’s $1M cap) determine whether they’re practical.
  • For most businesses, ACH is the most reliable baseline. It’s widely used, predictable for reconciliation and designed with network rules and security requirements—making it a strong default when you need speed without sacrificing governance.

If you need a bank-to-bank transfer to move money quickly—whether you’re paying a vendor, moving funds between accounts or collecting customer payments—you have more than one “fast” option. The catch is that speed isn’t the only variable. Processing windows, cutoff times, fees, dollar limits and security controls can change what “fast” really means in practice.

Below is a clear breakdown of the most common ways to send cash online, including how “instant” each one actually is, what they typically cost and when each makes sense for businesses.

 

What is an instant bank transfer?

An instant bank transfer typically refers to a digital transaction where the recipient receives funds (or a confirmation of funds) with minimal to no delay. In common marketing terms, “instant” can imply several different scenarios:

  • Real-time fund transfer: genuine instant settlement, accessible 24/7 on specific networks
  • Same-business-day processing: quick, yet still subject to banking hours and deadlines
  • Immediate approval with deferred settlement: frequently seen in certain app-based services

Therefore, when selecting the quickest method to transfer money between banks, begin by considering: Do I require the funds to settle immediately? Or do I just need a high level of assurance that it’s on its way, with reliable availability?

This approach will help you determine the most suitable option for your needs, ensuring that your financial transactions are both efficient and aligned with your expectations.

 

How to transfer money from one bank to another instantly (or close to it)

Most “fast” bank transfer methods fall into four buckets:

  1. Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfers (standard or same-day ACH)
  2. Wire transfers
  3. Peer-to-peer and digital wallet apps
  4. Paper checks (not instant, but still widely used)

 

ACH bank transfers

ACH is one of the most common ways businesses move money electronically using routing and account numbers. It’s widely used for payroll, bill payments, membership dues, vendor payments and recurring billing.

The ACH Network is administered by Nacha, which sets rules and operational standards for participants.

How fast is ACH?

ACH speed depends on how the payment is sent:

  • Standard ACH is often associated with “a few business days,” but Nacha has emphasized that a significant majority of ACH payments settle in one business day or less.
  • Same Day ACH can settle as quickly as a few hours on a banking day.

Same Day ACH limits

Same Day ACH has a per-payment limit of up to $1 million, based on Nacha’s rule change that took effect in 2022 (and remains the stated limit today, though Nacha has recently sought feedback on raising it).

What ACH costs

Costs vary by bank, processor and risk profile, but the general tradeoff looks like this:

  • Standard ACH: usually lower cost per transaction
  • Same Day ACH: typically higher fees in exchange for faster settlement

When is ACH the best option?

ACH is often the best default method for business payments because it offers:

  • Predictable settlement and reconciliation
  • Lower processing costs at scale
  • Strong network rules around handling bank account data

How ACH transfers stay secure

The ACH Network uses bank account and routing numbers, so security is non-negotiable. Nacha’s rules and security framework require protections for sensitive deposit account information.

For example, Nacha has rules that require certain large ACH participants to render account information unreadable when stored electronically (part of its security framework).
In practical terms, strong ACH security programs often rely on controls such as:

  • Encryption to protect data in storage and transmission
  • Tokenization or vaulting approaches to limit exposure of raw account details
  • Masking/truncation so stored or displayed account data is limited
  • Verification and monitoring to reduce fraud and invalid account activity

(Exactly which controls apply can depend on your role in the ACH ecosystem and your volume.)

 

Wire transfers

Domestic wires can be very fast—sometimes same-day—if initiated before cutoff times and if both banks process promptly. They’re often marketed as instant, but “instant” still depends on banking hours and operational checks.

What wire transfers cost

Wire transfers generally have higher fees than ACH. That can make them a poor fit for frequent, lower-dollar payments—but still useful for high-stakes, high-dollar transfers where timing matters more than cost.

When are wires the best option?

Wires can be a good choice when:

  • You’re sending a large amount and need speed
  • You can justify the higher per-transaction cost
  • You’re okay with stricter requirements and less flexibility

 

Mobile applications and digital wallets

Apps can be a convenient way to send cash online, especially for person-to-person payments or informal transfers. Depending on the app and the transaction type, transfers can be instant, same-day, or take a few business days.

What makes apps feel “instant”?

Many apps create a fast experience by doing one (or more) of the following:

  • Providing immediate confirmation while settlement happens later
  • Moving funds inside the app’s ecosystem first (wallet-to-wallet), then transferring to a bank
  • Offering an “instant transfer” feature for an extra fee

When are apps the best option?

App-based transfers can make sense when:

  • You’re sending money casually (not for formal invoicing or reconciliation)
  • You’re okay with varying fee models and transaction rules
  • You don’t need enterprise-grade reporting or controls

For many businesses, apps are convenient—but they’re not always ideal as a core receivables strategy, especially when you need reliable reconciliation, audit trails, or structured payment workflows.

 

Paper checks

Checks are still common, but they’re the opposite of instant.

Downsides of checks for speed and risk

  • Slow delivery and processing
  • Manual handling (printing, mailing, depositing)
  • Fraud risk (stolen checks, altered checks, counterfeit checks)

Checks can work for certain workflows, but if you’re optimizing for the fastest way to transfer money between banks, checks are usually what you’re trying to move away from.

 

Which is the best way to transfer money between banks?

Truly, it depends on your specific needs. If “best” means earliest reliable availability with a bank-to-bank path, your top contenders are usually:

  • Same Day ACH (fast settlement on a banking day, often within hours)
  • Wire transfers (fast but typically higher cost and banking-hour dependent)
  • Certain app-based instant transfer features (fast, but variable rules/fees)

If “best” means best blend of speed, cost and operational control, ACH—especially Same Day ACH—often wins for businesses because it’s designed for high-volume, bank-account-based payments and has clear network standards.

 

Accept payments on any channel with CSG Forte

If you’re a business that wants to move beyond checks and build a more modern bank-transfer experience, CSG Forte’s complete payment platform is configured to help you accept and process online ACH payments, digital wallets, credit and debit cards and many more payment types.

Explore CSG Forte’s payment platform to accept ACH (including Same Day ACH), cards and digital wallets—with the security, visibility and flexibility your business needs. Reach out today to talk to a payments expert.

 

Frequently asked questions

Q1. How long does a bank to bank transfer take with ACH?
Timing depends on whether it’s standard or Same Day ACH. Nacha notes that ACH payments can be processed in hours and that most settle in one business day or less, with Same Day ACH enabling faster settlement. Nacha+1

Q2. Is an instant bank transfer always truly instant?
Not always. Some options are real-time, some are same-day, and some give instant confirmation while funds settle later. Always check cutoffs, weekends/holidays, and any “instant transfer” fees.

Q3. Can I send cash online using routing and account numbers?
Yes. ACH is a common way to send money using routing and account details, and it’s widely used for business payments and recurring billing.

How Registered Payment Facilitators Modernize Patient Payments and Revenue Cycles

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Key Takeaways

  • Patchwork payment systems are holding healthcare back. Most organizations are running healthcare payments through a mix of portals, gateways and processors that create friction for patients and risk for revenue cycle teams.
  • The payment facilitator model can offload real risk and complexity. Forte manages onboarding, PCI DSS scope, and ongoing risk management, while providers/ISVs retain shared responsibility for data security and user access.
  • Choosing the right PFaaS partner matters more than ever. A healthcare-ready payment facilitator with deep industry experience, strong payment services and modern payment gateways can turn payment processing from a liability into a growth lever.

Many healthcare billing teams face persistent payment-related inquiries and manual follow-up tasks. Patients call to ask why a payment did not go through, staff bounce between portals and spreadsheets and your revenue cycle team spends more time chasing down missing information than actually improving collections. Everyone keeps saying your “payment system” is digital now, but it still feels like you are stitching together three different eras of technology every time a card gets run.

Most healthcare organizations did not set out to build complicated healthcare payment software. They added a portal here, a card terminal there, maybe a text-to-pay tool on top of an aging practice management system.

Behind the scenes, that patchwork means multiple payment processors, gateways that do not fully sync with clinical or billing platforms and a growing list of compliance acronyms someone on your team is supposed to “own” on top of their day job. The result is familiar: slow cash, clunky patient experiences and constant anxiety that one misstep in payment processing could turn into a security or compliance incident.

That is the gap compliant registered payment facilitation—delivered through embedded payments and Payment Facilitation-as-a-Service (PFaaS) models—is designed to close. Instead of treating payments as a bolt-on afterthought, the payment facilitator model bakes onboarding processes, risk management and compliance into the same infrastructure that moves money.

When that embedded payment infrastructure is the foundation for your payment systems, not an add-on, you have a shot at making healthcare payments easier for patients, more predictable for revenue cycle teams and far less stressful for whoever is currently responsible for payment operations.

 

The new realities of healthcare payments and the revenue cycle

Healthcare has never been simple, but the way money moves through the system has become especially strained.

Patients now shoulder a larger share of costs through high-deductible plans and coinsurance. They expect the same digital experience they get in retail and financial apps, yet many clinics still rely on mailed statements or in-office terminals that feel stuck in another decade.

On the back end, revenue cycle teams juggle remits from payers, card and Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments from patients and a tangle of adjustments or write-offs. Every disconnected system adds more manual work, more places for errors and more risk to cash flow.

Practice managers sit in the middle of all this. They have to keep front desk teams, billing staff and IT aligned while also dealing with the realities of the payments industry.

That often means negotiating with multiple payment processors, trying to get consistent reporting from different payment gateways and figuring out which vendor is responsible when something breaks.

The common theme is fragmentation. When the tools that handle healthcare payments are not coordinated, the revenue cycle becomes a series of disconnected steps instead of a clear, predictable path from visit to cash.

 

What modern healthcare payment software needs to deliver

To break out of that fragmentation, healthcare payment platforms have to do more than swipe cards and post files. They need to behave like strategic infrastructure, often delivered through embedded payments and PFaaS models that connect front-end patient experiences with back-end revenue operations. In short, they need to behave like strategic infrastructure.

1. Frictionless, patient-friendly payment services

Patients want simple choices that match their lives:

  • Pay from a mobile device right after a visit.
  • Enroll in a payment plan that fits their budget.
  • Store a card on file for future copays or balances.

Modern payment services should support card and ACH payments, digital wallets and recurring options without forcing patients to hop between different sites. A consistent, multi-channel payment solution is increasingly expected by patients and staff. Increasingly, it is becoming the baseline for a decent patient experience.

2. Seamless integration with clinical and billing platforms

A payment that does not post correctly might as well not exist. Healthcare payment software has to integrate cleanly with electronic health record (EHR) systems, practice management platforms and revenue cycle tools so that staff are not re-keying data or reconciling totals by hand.

That means payment systems need solid application programming interfaces (APIs), clear mappings for codes and departments and reporting that matches how finance and billing teams actually work. When payments live outside the core workflow, teams waste time and confidence in the data erodes.

3. Built-in security and compliance by design

Healthcare is a high-stakes environment for data. Any payment system that touches protected health information or cardholder data has to respect that.

That starts with a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant design, but extends into the card rails too. Strong tokenization, encryption in transit and at rest and clear Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) scope boundaries are table stakes. Providers and healthcare software vendors should not have to become PCI experts just to accept a copay.

This is where the underlying payments architecture matters. If the platform is built on top of a modern Payment facilitator model with smart risk management and clear responsibilities, it is much easier for healthcare organizations to stay in bounds.

 

A quick primer on the payment facilitator model

To understand why payment facilitation and PFaaS are such a good fit for healthcare, it helps to look at how the payment facilitator model works.

In a traditional merchant account setup, each healthcare provider or software vendor would work directly with a processor and acquiring bank. They would go through underwriting, set up their own account and carry full responsibility for compliance and chargebacks. This made sense when practices ran their own terminals and little else.

In the payment facilitator model, there is a master merchant account controlled by the payment facilitator. Individual providers or software platforms are onboarded under that umbrella as sub-merchants. The payment facilitator handles much of the underwriting, monitoring and connection to acquiring banks and payment gateways.

In plain terms, the payment facilitator sits between thousands of sub-merchants and the broader payments industry. It packages payment services, manages risk and gives those sub-merchants a simpler way to access card networks and bank rails.

For healthcare, where organizations are busy enough just keeping up with care delivery, this abstraction layer is powerful. It lets them plug into modern payment processing without negotiating separate deals, handling every detail of compliance or building direct relationships with multiple processors.

 

What “compliant payment facilitation” means for healthcare

Not every payment facilitator setup is created equal. In healthcare, compliant payment facilitation has a specific meaning.
First, a healthcare-ready payment facilitator has to understand both PCI DSS and HIPAA realities. That includes reducing cardholder data exposure for providers, designing data flows that respect protected health information and keeping audit trails that stand up to scrutiny.

Second, compliant payment facilitation includes a mature approach to risk management. That means monitoring for suspicious transactions, handling chargebacks efficiently and keeping a close eye on how sub-merchants behave. For healthcare platforms that serve many clinics or providers, this shared layer of risk control is essential.

Third, onboarding processes have to fit healthcare workflows. Providers cannot wait weeks to go live with payments or bounce between multiple portals to submit documents. A strong payment facilitator partner streamlines underwriting, handles KYC requirements behind the scenes and gets organizations transacting quickly without cutting corners.

When those pieces come together, healthcare organizations and healthcare SaaS vendors can rely on the payment facilitator model not just to move money and function as a revenue driver, but to keep them in compliance while they do it.

 

How to evaluate healthcare-focused partners

Once you decide payment facilitation belongs in your healthcare payment software strategy, the next question is who to trust.

A few practical evaluation points:

  • Compliance and security: Ask about PCI DSS level, independent audits and how the provider supports HIPAA compliant deployments. Clarify which party carries which responsibilities for data protection.
  • Healthcare experience: Look for real references in your segment, not just generic payments industry claims. Do they integrate with the EHR or practice management systems you already use. Do they understand common healthcare payment edge cases.
  • Technology and integration: Review APIs, SDKs and documentation. Make sure your team can embed payment services without months of custom work. Check whether the provider offers tools that fit your stack and development practices.
  • Risk and support: Ask how they handle disputes, fraud patterns and sudden changes in transaction volumes. Clarify who your teams call when something goes wrong and how issues are triaged.

A strong payment facilitator partner should be able to answer these questions clearly and show how their payment facilitator model will support your growth, not constrain it.

 

Where CSG Forte fits into your healthcare payment stack

A payments partner should not turn your team into full-time payments experts. It should give you reliable infrastructure so you can stay focused on patients and products while improving and scaling your offerings and generating revenue through the payments process.

CSG Forte delivers payment processing, payment facilitator capabilities and security controls through a single platform that can be embedded into healthcare payment software or wired into existing billing workflows. Healthcare organizations and software vendors use CSG Forte to:

  • Accept card and ACH payments in patient portals, in office and through mobile.
  • Offer payment plans and recurring billing that match real-world patient budgets.
  • Reduce exposure to cardholder data with strong tokenization and encryption.
  • Gain clearer visibility into payment activity across locations and channels.

For healthcare platforms that want to keep the experience consistent end to end, Forte also supports white-label capabilities, allowing you to present a fully branded payments experience while our infrastructure handles the complexity behind the scenes.

If you are rethinking how healthcare payments fit into your revenue cycle, this is a good moment to examine the foundation. Updating portals or adding a new payment gateway helps at the margins, but the bigger opportunity is to stand your payment systems on infrastructure that makes compliant payment facilitation part of the design.

Are you ready to explore what that could look like in your world? Reach out to the experts at CSG Forte to learn how we can support your healthcare payment software strategy.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How is PFaaS different from becoming a registered payment facilitator?

The PFaaS model lets healthcare providers and ISVs embed payments and monetize transactions while Forte manages underwriting, risk, and day-to-day compliance operations. Becoming a registered payment facilitator means taking on full regulatory and operational responsibility for those areas in-house.

Q2:Where do embedded payments show up in a typical healthcare workflow?

Embedded payments can power patient portal checkouts, in-office copay collection, payment plans, text-to-pay links, and automated recurring billing—all within the same experience your staff and patients already use for scheduling and records.

Q3: Does using a payment facilitator eliminate my compliance responsibilities?

No. A healthcare-ready payment facilitator like Forte significantly reduces your PCI DSS scope and centralizes many risk and monitoring functions, but providers and ISVs still retain shared responsibilities for protecting access, configuring workflows correctly, and handling PHI within their own systems.

Q4: How fast can organizations typically go live with embedded payments through PFaaS?

Because PFaaS centralizes underwriting and onboarding under a master account, healthcare organizations and ISVs can usually go live much faster than with traditional, one-merchant-at-a-time setups—often in days instead of weeks, depending on integration complexity and requirements.