In Brief: Fed Outlines Options For ACH Competition

The Federal Reserve Board proposed several options Tuesday for increasing competition between the reserve banks and private providers of automated clearing house transactions.

One possibility is to charge private ACH providers less than banks for use of Fed payment system products. Private providers are forced to use the Fed ACH product when banks getting payments are not members of the private network. This makes the private ACH network more expensive to use.

Another option is to adjust deadlines for delivery of ACH orders. The Fed could let private ACH networks submit delivery orders later in the day, but that would hurt banks using the Fed's service because they would have to place their orders earlier.

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