MasterCard Newsroom
Partnership takes some of the pain out of paying bills via ACH
Cash, check or charge? How quaint. The way we move money — and what we consider money — has changed dramatically over the last decade. The use of cash is declining, and personal checks are largely on life support. Consumers are looking for greater choices like mobile payments, crypto wallets, and person-to-person payment apps, which are taking their place alongside staple payment methods like cards and bank-to-bank ACH payments.
But technology is transforming even as consumer expectations for seamless payments rise. The latest twist on ACH payments— which account for trillions of dollars of volume each year and continues to grow — is the application of open banking technology and makes the process even simpler and more secure.
Launched by J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard, Pay-by-Bank is an ACH payment that uses open banking, which enables consumers to permission their financial data to be shared seamlessly between trusted parties to let them pay bills directly from their bank account with greater security. No longer will they be faced with the tedium of typing in routing and account numbers each time they need to pay a bill. For billers and merchants, it automates consumer onboarding and reduces the risk and cost of storing bank account information.
Pay-by-Bank holds huge potential for billers to take the pain out of recurring payments such as rent, utilities, payments to government, tuition, insurance, and health care where ACH is the primary medium of payment.
Billers whose consumers already pay with ACH can choose to integrate the J.P. Morgan Payments Pay-by-Bank solution on their existing payments page. At checkout, consumers select “Pay-by-Bank,” where they will be prompted to find their bank, verify themselves using their own bank’s familiar authentication process — a biometric scan, for example — and securely share their bank account information with JPMC to complete the payment on behalf of the biller.