The Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), a subsidiary of the Bank of Ghana, has introduced a Near Real Time (NRT) Automated Clearing House (ACH) Direct Credit platform that allows Corporate Institutions to make bulk payments much faster.

The service, being rendered in collaboration with the banks, is designed to enhance the efficiency of making bulk payments such as salaries, pensions and dividends within just 15 minutes, instead of the previous four to 24 hours.

A statement from GhIPSS said the platform provided corporate Institutions a viable alternative to Cheques and allowed them to credit the accounts of beneficiaries on a bulk payments list within 15 minutes. NRT is an addition to GhIPSS’ existing ACH Direct Credit platform.

This means, under this new ACH DC NRT regime, it will take 15 minutes for money sent from one source account to multiple accounts in different banks to be credited to the receivers’ accounts instead of the previous 24 hours.

“Corporate institutions have the opportunity to make bulk payments anytime between 6:00pm the previous day and 3:00pm the following day and the payees’ accounts will be credited in 15 minutes – almost in real time,” it explained.

GhIPSS said NRT is an efficient payment option, which provided transparency and certainty of payments because it allowed banks of corporate institutions to re-present returned payment details within the same session.

“Corporate institutions can correct all payment errors for re-presentment without fear of missing payment timelines,” it explained adding that the system also allowed for deadline payments to be met quickly.

“ACH DC NRT can be accessed by organisations through their banks as well as savings and loans companies for the payments of salaries, allowances, pensions, welfare benefits, suppliers and all other bulk payment types.”

The statement quoted GhIPSS CEO, Archie Hesse as saying, “Direct Credit NRT is a major addition to the plethora of electronic payment solutions, which will be extremely useful to businesses and other organizations.”

He encouraged organisations seeking to make faster bulk payments, to use the NRT to ensure that intended recipients received the money almost immediately.

ACH DC is a secure and reliable bulk payments service, which allows corporate institutions to make single or batched payments by electronically transferring funds directly into different bank accounts across different banks within Ghana.

It comes in three forms – Standard ACH DC, Express ACH DC and now the newly introduced ACH DC NRT.

Standard ACH DC allows businesses to make bulk payments to different beneficiary accounts across different banks and recipients’ accounts are credited within 24 hours after payment lists have been submitted to the paying corporate institution’s bank.

However, Express ACH DC allows that same process within four hours, while the now ACH NRT has reduced the time to 15 minutes.