Comment by dylanlacom

3 years ago

Because Nacha (and ACH) is explicitly not a government system

ACH involves the Federal Reserve Bank in every transfer. FedNow involves the Federal Reserve Bank in every transfer.

  • To be fair only about half of US ACH traffic flows through the Fed (the other half goes through the Clearing House Payments Company), but the Fed is very much involved (and a critical component of) the ACH network, even if the system is not explicitly a government one.

Nacha governs the ACH network and does not operate anything. The actual processing is split between the Fed and a company called Clearing House.