ACH & Instant Payments Audits

Nacha requires every participating financial institution and Third-Party Sender/Service Provider to conduct an annual audit of its ACH operations and related processes. An Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) from our team will conduct your annual ACH Audit and examine each facet of your ACH operations, including receipt processes, internal and external origination, and related agreements and forms. Every ACH Audit includes a preliminary exit meeting to review initial findings and recommendations, as well as a comprehensive ACH Audit Management Report at the conclusion of the review.

Wespay Advisors offers two types of ACH Audits, as below:

• Standard ACH Audit: Our rules-based ACH Audit is a two-day remotely performed service that reviews all aspects of your organization’s processing, spanning origination and receipt functions to ensure compliance with the most current ACH rules and regulations.
• Enhanced ACH Audit: A risk-based audit that includes all the features of the Standard ACH Audit in addition to an evaluation of the effectiveness of your organization’s risk controls via analysis of its documented policies and procedures. This is three-day engagement is designed to identify opportunities to strengthen the controls and mitigate the risks inherent to your organization’s ACH service. This service is designed to satisfy the Nacha requirement for completing both an ACH audit and ACH risk assessment.
  
  

The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments (RTP) network is a new core payments infrastructure providing consumers and businesses with the capability to send instantaneous payments on a 24/7/365 basis. Every financial institution that sends and/or receives RTPs must verify its compliance with the RTP Participation and Operating Rules on an annual basis. 

Wespay Advisors can help your organization meet this requirement with our RTP Audit Service by leveraging our decade-plus expertise in performing payments audits. Each engagement includes a preliminary exit meeting to share initial findings and recommendations followed by a comprehensive RTP Audit Management Report detailing those areas.

The RTP Audit will include focus areas, such as:

• General Participant Responsibilities 
  • Continuous operation validation
  • Message capabilities
  • Payment acceptance and receiver statement formatting
    
    
• Receiving Participant Obligations 
  • Payment message response acceptance and timing
  • Funds availability
  • Multi-factor authentication
  • Fraud and risk monitoring
  • Errors and unauthorized payment process
    
    
• Sending Participant Obligations (if applicable)
  •  Message formatting
  • Directory service compliance

FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s new Instant Payment service, offers senders instant clearing capability, receivers instant access to received funds, and instant settlement to participating FIs.  Wespay Advisors has leveraged its Instant Payments expertise to create a FedNow audit designed to evaluate the effectiveness of your organization’s FedNow controls and mitigate risk.

Every FedNow audit includes an exit meeting to share findings and provide recommendations for improving your internal policies and procedures.

The FedNow audit will include focus areas such as:

General Participant Responsibilities

• Participant’s Policy
• Service Continuity
  Disclosures
• Negative List requirements

Receiving Participant Obligations

• Message receipt
• Exception processing
• Notices to beneficiaries

Sending Participant Obligations (if applicable)

• Message processing
• Business Onboarding
• Fraud prevention

Requestion for Payment

• Requestion for Payment Policy

Benefits of our FedNow Audit Service:

• Knowledgeable and experienced auditor will work with your team to perform the audit and provide staff training to learn critical aspects of conducting a FedNow Audit.
• Identify procedures and controls that can be strengthened to mitigate risk and compliance with Operating Circular Eight and the FedNow Operating Procedures.
• An effective audit can serve as an early warning barometer and zero in on specific areas requiring additional attention to help prevent future issues.