An ACH credit or debit is an electronic money transfer between financial institutions using the Automated Clearing House network. For example, ACH is commonly used for direct deposit of paychecks and monthly debits for automatic payments.
Lower cost, lower risk with First Citizens ACH Services
Streamline high-volume payments with secure, cost-effective Automated Clearing House (ACH) processing for both credit and debit transactions, including same day settlement up to $1M per transaction. ACH Services support low or high volume and recurring payment activity such as payroll, collections, eCommerce, vendor, tax payments and more
Save time with AI powered mobile expense reporting
Easily send and receive ACH transactions between your First Citizens account and other financial institutions via the ACH network with a lower cost than checks, wire, cards and instant payments.
Send fast, cost-efficient payments with ACH credit
Reduce manual work to pay vendors, employees, taxes and more with one-time or recurring ACH payments.
Receive predictable cash flow with ACH debit
Improve collection efficiency for either one-time or recurrent payments from consumer and corporate customers with ACH debits scheduled on specific dates
Originate ACH payments in flexible ways
Send ACH transactions using digital banking or our bill pay service. You can also transmit payment instructions from your ERP via Transact Gateway or our ACH API Banking.
Save time with streamlined payables
Create one time or recurring ACH credit transactions that simplify accounts payable with multi-batch processing.
Simplify reconciliation with end-to-end reporting
We offer multiple comprehensive ACH reports to easily reconcile ACH activity and simplify originated and returned transactions.
Enhance fraud protection for incoming ACH payments
ACH Positive Pay
Control the type of ACH credit or debit transfers that are allowed to post to your account and which types should be auto rejected.D
ACH sub-accounts
Protect your First Citizens deposit account using pseudo sub-accounts for anyone sending funds to you via ACH credit or pulling funds from your account via ACH debit.
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ACH FAQs
Depending on the situation, either your customer (or other payer) initiates the ACH credit transfer to your business checking account, or your company initiates an ACH debit transfer to pull funds from the payer's account.
With our ACH services, debit and credit transfers can process same day for up to $1M per payment. For ACH credits, you also have the option to send next-day payments up to $99.9M.
Please contact your Relationship team for more information on ACH payment processing rates.
To initiate an ACH credit, in many cases you need to specify the recipient's full name, bank account number, routing number, the amount you want to send, and the date payment should be sent. When you make recurring payments to well-established businesses (e.g., for vendor payables), you may be able to simplify it using our bill pay services. For instance, you might only need to add the merchant to your customer account number as the bank may already have their routing data. Then you can schedule payments as needed.
First Citizens' ACH deadlines are as follows:
Same day ACH deadline: 12:00 PM PT
Transaction eligibility: $1,000,000 Limit per Entry. International ACH Transaction (IAT) not eligible.
ACH credit funds availability: 1:30 PM or 5:00 PM RDFI local time (dependent upon Same Day processing window & RDFI receipt time).
Next day ACH deadline: 7:00 PM PT / 10:00 PM ET
Files Processed: Monday - Friday, excluding bank holidays.
All ACH exceptions must be cleared prior to the ACH window / processing run to meet the corresponding deadline(s).