Green Sheet interviews Dave Glaser, COO at NMI, on Same Day ACH transaction limit

Higher transaction limits could expand Same Day ACH’s role in business payments while raising the stakes for fraud prevention, liquidity management and payment routing. Dave Glaser, chief operating officer at NMI, discusses what the planned increase means for payments providers and their customers, how to prepare for larger transactions and where Same Day ACH fits alongside instant payments and other payment methods.

Green Sheet: 1. Nacha plans to raise the Same Day ACH transaction limit to $10 million in 2027. What practical changes do you expect that higher limit to drive for payment providers and the businesses they serve?

Dave Glaser: This raise makes it relevant to a much larger share of business payments. Today, companies may have to split transactions, fall back to wires or build separate processes for higher-value payments. Raising the limit gives payment providers another tool to route those transactions based on the right combination of speed, cost and risk.

For businesses, that can mean fewer workarounds, more predictable funds movement and better visibility into when money actually leaves or reaches an account.

GS: 2. Which industries or use cases do you think stand to benefit most from the higher limit, and are there applications that may still be better suited to other payment rails?

DG: B2B payments are an obvious beneficiary, particularly large invoice payments, payroll funding, merchant settlement, insurance payments and treasury use cases like cash concentration.

However, a higher limit doesn't mean Same Day ACH becomes the right rail for every payment. There are situations where the immediacy and 24/7 availability of RTP or FedNow matter more, and there are still transactions where wires make sense because of the requirements around the payment. The opportunity is to give businesses access to multiple rails and make the routing decision based on the transaction rather than forcing every payment down the same path.

GS: 3. As Same Day ACH moves into higher-value transactions, what new challenges will payment and lending platforms face around fraud prevention, risk management and liquidity?

DG: The core issue is that the loss per event goes up while the time to catch it goes down. At $10 million per payment, one bad credit can cost more than a year of small-ticket fraud, and same-day settlement means the money can be gone before anyone looks at it.

We've spent the last two years rebuilding our risk program around that reality, and three things matter most. First, know who you're paying and who's sending. Verifying account ownership and beneficial ownership before the first large payment is more important than monitoring after it.

Second, set limits by customer, not by network. The network cap is a ceiling, but not an approval. Exposure limits and reserves should match what you've actually underwritten. Third, look at all the rails together. A merchant's card behavior often tells you something about their ACH risk, and the reverse is also true.

On liquidity, more settlement windows mean treasury, risk and the sponsor bank need the same picture during the day, not at the end of day. And as more payments get started by software agents rather than people, authorization has to show what the payer actually allowed, not just that a request came in.

GS: 4. How do you see the higher Same Day ACH limit affecting the ongoing evolution of instant payments? Will the two rails become more complementary or more competitive?

DG: I truly see them as complementary. The payments market is moving away from a world where one rail has to win. ACH, Same Day ACH, RTP, FedNow and wires all solve different problems around cost, speed, finality, availability and risk.

In fact, with Same Day ACH, RTP and FedNow all supporting transactions up to $10 million, the more interesting question becomes which rail is right for a specific payment. Increasingly, the value will sit in the infrastructure that can make that decision intelligently and manage the transaction consistently regardless of which rail is underneath it.

GS: 5. What operational changes should payment platforms, lenders and businesses begin making now to prepare for the new limit before it takes effect?

DG: The first step is understanding where higher-value transactions sit in the current payment flow and what happens when those transactions fail. Businesses should also model how larger same-day inflows and outflows could affect liquidity throughout the day. Increasing the limit is relatively straightforward at the rail level; making sure every system around the rail can handle those payments cleanly is where the work is.

GS: 6. Looking beyond the 2027 increase, where do you see Same Day ACH fitting into the broader U.S. payments ecosystem over the next five years as faster payments continue to evolve?

DG: Same Day ACH will continue to be an important part of a broader multi-rail payments ecosystem. Businesses increasingly want faster movement, but they also care about cost, control, reach and predictability.

It's about building infrastructure that can use ACH, Same Day ACH, RTP, FedNow and other payment methods together and choose the right path for each transaction. The rail becomes one component of the product; the real value is the intelligence and control layer sitting above it.

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