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To Use ACHNow

To use ACHNow, you must use the /transact endpoint. There is no ACHNow support for /issue_sila and /redeem_sila.

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WIP Documentation

As the ACHNow feature is brand-new, please feel free to reach out to us in your Slack channel if you have any questions, or something seems incorrect.

With ACHNow, customers can now turn regular ACH transactions into instant ones using FedNow, RTP, and Sila's own proprietary Instant Settlement API.

Basic Flow

1. ACH submitted via /transact
2. Sila works its magic on the back-end to determine available instant paths
   1. Customization options to influence rail chosen include fastest or cheapest route and if ACH payments should be sent via Instant Settlement or Same Day.
3. Rail is chosen
   1. FedNow: sent to Trice or other FedNow provider
   2. RTP: sent to Trice or other RTP provider
   3. If instant FedNow and RTP rails aren't available, transactions are sent via ACH and settled with Sila's Instant Settlement product
4. Success!

Additional details

• Customer will maintain a reserve account and corresponding wallet on a Sila partner bank capable of doing ACH transactions.
• Sila will maintain a reserve account on the bank partner of our payment providers (ie, on Transpecos bank for Trice, an RTP and FedNow provider), and manage sub-ledgers (or the preferred name the partner bank uses) for each end user using that instant rail.
• Sila will manage ensuring that there are adequate funds for each end user to send money out via the instant rails, using the Sila account at that partner bank.
• Sila will zero the end user's ledgers at the end of each business day, crediting or debiting the reserve wallet as appropriate.

Why use ACHNow? What are the benefits?

Do you rely on ACH and wish your transactions would get to their destinations faster? Are you wanting to utilize different rails but don't want to build integrations yourself? ACHNow is for you!

Managing the float
Moving money back and forth across providers and rails requires a great deal of orchestration and care. The same can be said for having to manage reserve accounts with each of your partners, and moving money back and forth ahead of transactions.

Sila has signed contracts with banks to manage lines of credit at each bank our providers use, so you don't have to. Are you going to do $1 million in FedNow credits? $2 million in RTP debits? Don't even worry about it.

Ledgering across rails
For Sila customers using ACHNow, a transaction is sent and handled. You call us for the status of the transaction, and so forth. Sila manages the complexity of tracking transaction statuses at our different partners, and makes our management of accounts and funds across partners transparent. You don't need to know the intricacies of how one rail provider's partner bank handles sub-ledgers and roll-up accounting versus another's.

Finding, adding, and managing the rail partners
No one wants to go out and find a partner for each of the rails that is willing to do business, and, longer-term, continue to shop for partners once they've landed a deal. Sila, however, is constantly seeking the best price and will always be attempting to have at least two providers for each rail so that we can force bidding for traffic. No one wants to do that instead of focusing on business, but they do want to see price pressure downwards over time, even as adoption increases.

Optimizing for price
When there is more than one instant payment rail (or more than one provider for that rail) that can take a transaction, we'll be evaluating which one is the cheapest and best. We use end user included minimums (if a client has 1,000 RTP transactions included, we want to make sure they use as many of those free transactions as possible), your stated preferences for time (ie, using same-day ACH if it is cheaper and the end user specifies it's ok if it takes four hours), and potentially Sila offering incentives to choose one rail or provider over another.

Instant Settlement for ACH
Even where payments can’t go over an instant rail, your account can still settle immediately, and for the few transactions that are returns or encounter other issues, we have processes in place to handle them.

Integration

Recommended

• Submit ACH transactions via our /transfer API
• Let Sila manage the accounts and float
• Sila does our ACHNow magic on the back-end
  • Per-transaction attempt on instant rails
  • Where not possible, send via regular ACH and settle wallets immediately with Instant Settlement