Nacha Turned the Clock: ACH Credits by 9 a.m.

Two new Nacha rules began on 18 September 2026. Money from everyday ACH payments, like salaries, must now reach accounts by 9 a.m. on payment day, and the rules say clearly which payments count as international.

Most ACH payments into US accounts, from salaries and benefits to refunds and supplier payments, still go as standard payments rather than Same Day ACH. Until September, the receiving bank only had to make that money available by 9 a.m. on payment day if the file reached it by 5 p.m. the day before. The ACH Operators send more files after 5 p.m., and money in those later files could be held until the end of the day.

That condition is gone. All standard ACH payments into accounts must now be available by 9 a.m., in the receiving bank’s local time, on payment day. If your salary is due on Friday, it should be in your account by 9 a.m. on Friday, even if the file arrived overnight. Banks in far-off time zones, such as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, get an exception: when a file reaches them after 8 a.m., they have until the end of that day.

The second change is about international payments, called IATs. Nacha says the old definition was hard to use. Now an ACH payment is an IAT if it is the US part of a cross-border transfer: the money starts at, passes through or ends up with a bank or payment provider outside the US. IATs carry extra details for sanctions checks and can’t be sent as Same Day ACH.

What to do: banks that still post payments after 9 a.m. need to speed up. Companies that pay partners abroad, or use a payment provider based abroad, should check whether those payments now count as IATs, which can mean extra checks when signing up.

Photo: The 1873 street clock in Salt Lake City, by Ken Lund, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

This article first appeared in Payment Samachar, Edition 3 (November 2026).