ACH credits get earlier morning availability, and more

Payments News Weekly - Sep 4, 2026. I read through payments news so you do not have to.

But first, announcement. State of Payments survey: It takes about four minutes, anonymous responses are welcome, and we will publish the results at the end of the year.

News of the week

ACH credits should be available earlier in the morning

Starting September 18, receiving banks have to make all non-Same Day ACH credits available by 9 a.m. local time on the settlement date. Today, that 9 a.m. rule depends on whether the bank received the credit by 5 p.m. the prior day. Nacha is removing that condition.

This is mostly a bank operations change, but it affects anyone who sends ACH credits and tells customers when money will be usable. That includes platforms paying sellers, insurers sending claim payouts, marketplaces sending cashouts, employers using ACH payroll-like flows, and merchants issuing ACH refunds.

The practical impact is timing. Some next-day and two-day ACH credits may become usable earlier in the morning, especially credits that arrive in later ACH Operator files. Payment teams should check payout promises, support scripts, treasury reporting, and provider SLAs so “next day” means the same thing to operations, finance, and the customer. More info on Nacha website.

Other news

Card network and fraud updates

• Visa launches enhanced A2A Protect for account-to-account fraud (Visa)

• Nexi, JCB and UnionPay team on Italian public transport payments (Finextra)

ACH, account-to-account, and instant payments

• New rule clarifies when ACH payments are International ACH Transactions (Nacha)

• Canva adds cardless subscription payments in South Africa with EBANX and Capitec Pay (Open Banking Expo)

• Open Banking has proved data sharing can work, now it has to prove value (Open Banking Expo)

Merchant operations and payment performance

• Minor Hotels partners with Checkout.com to consolidate global hospitality payments (Checkout.com)

• 77% of merchants are ready to share data for smarter checkout (PYMNTS)

• 24/7 money movement means treasury needs weekend operating plans (PYMNTS)

Agentic commerce, stablecoins, and cross-border

• Checkout.com publishes MCP infrastructure for trusted AI payments (Checkout.com)

• Europe’s push for payment sovereignty is creating a new challenge (Electronic Payments International)

• Meta to roll out bill payments on WhatsApp in India via BBPS (Electronic Payments International)

Payments Substack posts

• Fintech Recap: What Can We Learn From Coastal’s Earnings Miss? (Fintech Business Weekly)

• Issue #173: Stripe Walks Away From PayPal, Vanguard Buys Altruist, And Google Lands In Capital Markets (Fintech Radar)

More from Payments FM

• Interview: The Business of Payments for Software Platforms with Jo Phillips & Will Corbera, Payabli

• Participate: State of payments survey. We will publish the results at the end of the year.

• Community: Join Payments Slack Community