You may have donors ask you to offer ACH (a direct bank account draft) as a transaction option for your online donations in CoolPay. While we can enable the ACH option for your CoolPay donations, we need to also disclose the risks associated with ACH transactions. These risks exist regardless of any provider you may use, so we want to make sure your organization understands the risks involved.
ACH allows lower fees for your donors, but it also shifts some of the risk of fraud to the organizations who are receiving the funds. This is due to how ACH works throughout all of banking. (Most providers will not tell you this—they just show it as a way to lower fees for your donors.)
When a Donor enters their ACH information, the only verifiable information is the routing number of the bank. The actual account number cannot be verified, and unlike credit cards, it cannot be determined if there are sufficient funds.
Because of this, ACH takes a few days to process, almost exactly like a standard check. If the Donor incorrectly enters their account number, or does not have sufficient funds, the transaction will be rejected like a bad check. This results in a fee ranging from $15-45+ depending on the bank.
While we have seen very little issues with ACH, we want to make sure you understand the fee risks associated with it.
Another option is for us to turn on ACH for just one of your donation forms, and then that donation form with the ACH capability can be the one you email to those donors who insist on making that type of transaction.
Click the support chat bubble in the bottom right of your screen to let us know if you would like to proceed with adding ACH transactions to your CoolPay online donations, or if you have any further questions.