Ask HN: How to get a bank to proxy ACHs on your behalf?

[homedepotdave]

I'm considering pursuing a marketplace business idea that would involve facilitating ACH payments directly from customer A to customer B (without my company in the middle). For a few reasons I can't just use Stripe/Dwolla/etc.

There's some good info online about this (see Gusto's helpful post [1]) but for the first step of partnering with a bank, they all basically just say "You have to find a bank willing to serve as your ODFI."

So my question is, does anyone know what that process is like, and how hard it is? Do I just make a business account with Wells Fargo or SVB and then request this service? What are my chances of approval? Anything else I can expect from the process? Any advice would be much appreciated.

[1] https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective-part-1/

[al2o3cr]

From a purely-technical perspective, I don't believe account-to-account direct transfer is possible in an ACH file. The file format (see part 4 of that article) of the "PPD Entry Detail Record" specifies one end of the transaction, but the other end is always the entity transmitting the ACH.

The other big challenge: what happens if the ACH gets reversed? There's a time lag between when the ODFI pays out to the originating entity, and when the ACH is irreversible.