Experience with ACH Payment Controls in Small Regional Banks?
Operator here, running a manufacturing business acquired through ETA. I just refinanced my existing loan with a new bank and I am transitioning my bank account/Bill Pay and found a control gap I didn’t expect. In the new banks ACH bill pay system, anyone with payment access can change a vendor’s routing and account number at any time without providing a notification to someone like myself. I asked whether my AP person could be limited to editing the dollar amount only. The answer was no: if they can initiate payments, they can edit the banking details. The only safeguard they offered was having me manually review the routing and account info on every ACH before approving which defeats the purpose of delegating. The risk is obvious. Someone sees a large invoice come in, swaps in their own account, the payment clears, and the money is gone before anyone notices. An ACH reversal doesn’t help once the funds are withdrawn, and commercial accounts generally leave that loss with the business. I’m curious how others handle this: Does your bank support template-only payments, dual approval on payee or bank-detail changes, or alerts when banking info is edited? If so, which bank or platform? Did you give up on the bank’s tools and move AP to a third-party system like Bill.com, Ramp, or Melio? How has it worked, and does it actually lock down vendor bank changes? Smaller banks seem to lag here, and I’d like to hear from anyone who has dealt with this, especially with small regional banks.