Nacha finalizes rules to combat credit-push fraud

To reduce the incidence of frauds that use credit-push payments, Nacha announced ICBA-supported rules for all participants to promote monitoring and recovering fraudulent funds in the ACH payments they receive.

How They Work: The rules:

• Establish a base level of ACH payment monitoring on all parties in the ACH Network except consumers.

• Follow the flow of a credit-push payment to promote the detection of fraud from the point of origination through the point of receipt at the receiving depository financial institution.

• Empower the originating financial institution to request the return of the payment and delay funds availability and allow the RDFI to return suspicious transactions when fraud is detected.

• Facilitate transaction monitoring by applying a standard transaction description for ACH credits used for payroll payments.

Impact: Schemes such as vendor and payroll impersonation as well as business email compromise, or BEC, can result in payments being “pushed” from a payer’s account to the account of a fraudster. According to the FBI, BEC was the second-costliest type of cybercrime last year.

ICBA View: ICBA supported the proposed changes released in 2022 and encouraged community bankers to respond to a Nacha survey on the proposal. Community banker survey respondents expressed support for the proposals and cited their importance in maintaining the safety and security of the ACH network.

ICBA Resources: Community bank security resources are available to ICBA members on ICBA's Cyber and Data Security resource center.