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ACH is still stuck in the 1970's (along with banking mentality).

You should definitely be able to whitelist and blacklist ACH transactions on your bank account but nope, anyone can just take the magic digits off the bottom off any one of your checks and help themselves.

But why the heck doesn't a bank have software that sets off alerts when more than $100k is drawn from an account, even $10k transactions have to be reported to the government, so why not also notify the customer and bank management?

Also, why in 2011 does it take 5 days officially to clear ACH?



It takes 5 days to clear ACH because "hey we took this money, you have 5 days to let us know if that's okay" is the authentication.


Except when you transfer money into paypal, they make you wait 5 days but I see the bank clear the money in 24-48 hours


Most banks do have something in place for whitelisting transfers, but adding new recipients is often protected by the same regime that the Zeus bot controllers have already broken.


According to the OP, the transfers did set off alarms in the bank, but the bank chose to ignore them.


I don't think they CHOSE to ignore them, it was more that their response was not the best. (It trigger challenge/response questions versus the better option of a manual review)




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