ACH debit funds holds

Initiating an ACH debit via Increase adds money to an Increase account's balance and decreases the balance of your counterparty at their financial institution. There is no positive acknowledgement for this type of transfer; the counterparty bank only sends an ACH Return message if they reject the transfer. Transfers can be rejected for many reasons, but most commonly: insufficient funds, incorrect account details, or a lack of authorization.

In general, most rejected transfers are returned by the end of the second business day after the ACH is sent. To prevent accidentally spending money that ultimately gets reversed, Increase places a hold on funds received via ACH debit.

Understanding the hold

The hold is visible in several ways in the Increase API and Dashboard.

A Pending Transaction with a category of inbound_funds_hold and a negative amount offsetting the amount of the ACH debit is allocated to the account. The Inbound Funds Hold has a field automatically_resolves_at indicating when the hold will expire.

You can query for ongoing or historical Inbound Funds Holds using the GET /pending_transactions endpoint.

An account's available balance is decreased by the sum of all the negative Pending Transactions. The account's current balance will include the value of the ACH Tranfers that may still be returned and have Inbound Funds Holds against them.

Avoiding holds

If you'd like faster access to ACH debits, email us at support@increase.com to set up a reserve account that fits the transaction behavior of your business.