

Ask HN: Best banks for a programmatic ACH interface? - llambda

I'm trying to research the best options to do payouts. It seems that currently ACH is most readily available through your bank (assuming they offer it). Both Stripe and Feefighters are planning to offer ACH in the future, but it's unclear when those offerings will become available. Does anyone have any feedback? Maybe some good articles about getting set up with ACH, bonus if it involves marketplace web applications utilizing ACH to make payments to their customers. Maybe ultimately PayPal is a better way to go?
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rlucas
Few if any banks are going to be "good" and none will really have an "API."
Set your sights low. The best you're likely to get is the ability to upload a
batch file, or if you're really lucky, a NACHA formatted file. Expect to post
collateral with your bank, tying up anything from several thousand to several
hundred thousand dollars (depending on your volumes).

There are reasons why ACH is problematic; it's not [solely] because banks
suck. There are anti-money laundering (AML) as well as anti-abuse protections
that must be taken.

We at Lighter Capital did find some reasonably forward-thinking institutions
in our search and I'm happy to share what we learned offline --
rlucas@lightercapital.com.

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martin1b
Consider using a payment gateway like Authorize.Net. Their ACH capability is
pretty straight forward and works well.
[http://www.authorize.net/solutions/merchantsolutions/merchan...](http://www.authorize.net/solutions/merchantsolutions/merchantservices/echeck/)

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angusdavis
Take a look at <http://achdirect.com/>

