Charging a fee for ACH transactions

I have two questions in 1.
-If our bank sets up an ACH for a customer who has a checking account at our bank to pay their loan at another bank, can we charge a fee to do this? The same for a loan at our bank to pull the loan payment from a checking account at another bank? Or set up an ACH from deposit account at our bank to or from a deposit account at another bank?

-If so, what are the issues concerning Regulation E and Truth in Savings?

Charging a fee for ACH activity is just so counter-intuitive. ACH transactions are among the cheapest your bank handles.

But if you are to charge a fee, there are Reg E fee disclosure issues (which can be handled in either your EFT or your Savings disclosure).

The law certainly doesn't consider prohibiting fees for ACH activity. Consider whether your customers will. Is your bank better off if its customers go back to using checks to avoid a fee? To be candid, I would not revert to checks if my bank started to impose ACH fees, but I would close my account straightaway.

The thirst for fee income is making banks consider some bizzare things...

for consumers it is as John said, counter-intuitive. For commercial customers, most banks charge a set fee for debit or credit transactions posted, either per item or a monthy minimum that becomes per item once the per-item exceeds the minimum threshold.

Now, in the scenario above, it sounds like you could be setting up an origination where your bank generates the ACH entry to debit your customer and provide the credit to the other bank - if you are talking origination, then all banks i'm aware of charge a fee for this. Assuming the customer uses some sort of cash management tool or product to create and send the payment.

We are also looking into implementing a one time setup fee for ACH origination to pay a consumer's loan with us and debit their checking account with another bank.

The fee would be disclosed on the ACH Authorization form.

Are we required to disclose this fee on our Fee schedule?

Bump

If that is the only scenario to which the fee will apply, there's no reason to include it on your schedule.

We charge a $5.00 fee for one time ACH loan payments. We debit the customers account at another bank and credit their loan with us. It is considered a "tel" entry since the authorization is over the phone, and we disclose the $5.00 fee during the conversation with the customer. We do not charge a fee for Scheduled Recurring ACH transfers....