The ACH Network is comprised of over 12,000 banks and financial institutions that comply with the national ACH (NACHA) standard format of transferring funds electronically.

While there are several methods of electronic payments (debit cards, wire transfers, etc...), the volume of ACH transactions has grown considerably over the past few years - principally driven by cost savings - in terms of bank fees, as well as administration time, fraud reduction, consistent availability of funds and recent changes in the marketplace.

Many already enjoy the benefits of ACH, with such activities as Direct Deposit of payroll, and the automatic payment of utility, mortgage and other recurring obligations.

Provided that your Web site takes appropriate security precautions, a donor is actually safer using ACH than a credit card. ACH only operates within the U.S., and domestic checking account numbers are of almost no value to roadsters outside the U.S. In Convoy's case, we apply the same security measures to ACH transactions that we do to credit cards, including not storing donors' checking account numbers in the Convoy's database.