ACH debit blocking for small business accounts?
January 19, 2011 3:19 PM Subscribe
Do any US banks offer ACH debit blocking to their small business customers?
I've just been told by Chase, the bank my company has been using for 15 years, that the only way to prevent fraudulent ACH debits from anyone who has our account number is to close the account and open a new one and keep that account number secret. I've discovered with a little Googling that they offer ACH debit blocking (where the customer gives them a list of companies that are allowed to debit their account) to big commercial banking clients but not to us little guys, which is infuriating.
Are there other banks that do offer this service to small business customers? Ideally banks with either comprehensive on-line banking tools or branches in NYC.
I've just been told by Chase, the bank my company has been using for 15 years, that the only way to prevent fraudulent ACH debits from anyone who has our account number is to close the account and open a new one and keep that account number secret. I've discovered with a little Googling that they offer ACH debit blocking (where the customer gives them a list of companies that are allowed to debit their account) to big commercial banking clients but not to us little guys, which is infuriating.
Are there other banks that do offer this service to small business customers? Ideally banks with either comprehensive on-line banking tools or branches in NYC.
I had no luck with this, but I solved this problem for our business by opening a spare account, and as soon as funds hit, I move it out of that account to my primary account. No one gets the account number of anything except the deposit account.
Still this isn't failproof... several years ago someone pulled the routing & account number off of our business checks to open up accounts with CCBill and purchase $700 in porn off our business checking account... I can't believe we had to deal with this kind of thing on our books. We were with Bank of America but closed that account and went to a local bank, who actually calls us when anything weird is going on with our account... that may be the way to go unless you can find a bank that takes your needs seriously.
posted by crapmatic at 4:16 PM on January 19, 2011
Still this isn't failproof... several years ago someone pulled the routing & account number off of our business checks to open up accounts with CCBill and purchase $700 in porn off our business checking account... I can't believe we had to deal with this kind of thing on our books. We were with Bank of America but closed that account and went to a local bank, who actually calls us when anything weird is going on with our account... that may be the way to go unless you can find a bank that takes your needs seriously.
posted by crapmatic at 4:16 PM on January 19, 2011
Oh, and like crapmatic, our M&T setup is a zero-balance account and a collections account. Checks and the like are written from the ZBA and automatically pulled from the collections account.
posted by quadrilaterals at 4:23 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by quadrilaterals at 4:23 PM on January 19, 2011
I believe the kind of account you are looking for is a sweep account. Banks automatically yank any money over a limit into another account when the deposit hits.
posted by gjc at 7:50 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by gjc at 7:50 PM on January 19, 2011
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posted by quadrilaterals at 4:06 PM on January 19, 2011