NACHA (who are responsible for development, administration, and governance of the ACH Network) are implementing new rules on March 20, 2026. Two sets of new rules are going into place:
- RISK MANAGEMENT TOPICS – (Fraud Monitoring Phase 1)
- RISK MANAGEMENT TOPICS – Company Entry Descriptions
Company Entry Descriptions is more interesting from our perspective as it creates two new defined company entry descriptions: “PAYROLL and PURCHASE”. They provide the following information regarding payroll.
This rule establishes a new standard description for PPD Credits for payment of wages, salaries and similar types of compensation. The Company Entry Description field must contain the description PAYROLL.
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- RDFIs that monitor inbound ACH credits will have better information regarding new or multiple payroll payments to an account.
- A standard description for payroll payments can help support RDFI logic to provide or suppress early funds availability.
- The amendment is intended to reduce the incidence of fraud involving payroll redirections.
This could make it harder to meet the direct deposit requirements for bank account bonuses. We had the same concerns when NACHA made changes to the way ACH transfers are coded in 2014 but nothing really eventuated from that. Even if these changes do make it more difficult, we will just have to get more creative.
Hat tip to reader Ryan
