Trifish Finance Inc. in May selected ACH Federal to provide automated clearinghouse payment processing to its customers after learning its previous provider, MoneyGram Payment Systems Inc., stopped processing ACH payments, ACH Federal announced last week.
MoneyGram informed customers in January it would terminate its ACH-processing relationships, and the company stopped processing new ACH transactions in April. A representative from MoneyGram was unable to comment on why the company stopped supporting ACH payments by PaymentsSource deadline.
The Los Angeles-based auto-finance company has been accepting ACH payments for five years and needed to find a new processor so clients could still make ACH-based transactions, Avi Shraga, Trifish Finance president, tells PaymentsSource.
Despite MoneyGram’s suggestion that its former clients switch to Fidelity National Information Services Inc., Trifish believes ACH Federal was a better fit to fulfill its electronic payment-processing needs, Shraga says.
Several of ACH Federal’s employees used to work at MoneyGram, Shraga says. And “ACH Federal took less than a month to get us back up and running after MoneyGram announced it was leaving the business,” he adds.
Trifish Finance only accepts over-the-phone payments but will begin accepting payments online by yearend.
Trifish prefers its customers pay through the ACH network because “we get the money right away,” Shraga says. Moreover, it is more convenient for customers because the funds are withdrawn directly from their checking accounts, and “we don’t charge customers to make a payment over the phone,” he says.
“Any and all finance companies are always looking for inexpensive means to receive payments, and ACH-based payments provide the opportunity,” Dan Thompson, national sales manager of Chattanooga, Tenn.-based ACH Federal, tells PaymentsSource. On average, “walk-in payments from companies such as Western Union or MoneyGram may cost consumers between $9.95 and $13.95 per transaction. ACH-based payments do not carry a fee for consumers and each transaction costs companies well under $1,” he adds.
In the first 30 days of the partnership, ACH Federal processed more than $434,000 worth of transactions, according to ACH Federal.
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