Migrating Vendors From Checks to ACH Without Increasing Payment Risk

1. Collect securely: gather banking details through a protected channel, not loose email. 2. Verify accounts: confirm each account before the first ACH payment. 3. Confirm changes out of band: validate any later banking change through a known channel. 4. Keep controls: preserve approval routing and segregation of duties. 5. Phase the rollout: move vendors in waves rather than all at once. 6. Reconcile each payment: tie one payment to one bank transaction and one ERP record. 7. Log everything: capture banking entries and changes in the audit trail.

The migration begins with collecting bank account details, and how they are collected sets the risk level. Gathering details through a secure, structured channel, rather than loose email, reduces the chance of interception or spoofing. A vendor portal where the vendor submits their own details is safer than AP keying numbers from an email.

Verification follows collection. Before the first ACH payment, the account should be confirmed so funds do not go to a wrong or fraudulent destination. Verifying once at onboarding closes the most common gap in an electronic payment program.

The highest-risk event in an ACH program is a request to change banking details. Fraud schemes often impersonate a vendor and ask AP to redirect payments to a new account, and the request can look legitimate.

The control is out-of-band confirmation. Any change to banking details should be verified through a separate, previously known channel, such as a phone number already on file, rather than trusting the request as it arrives. This single practice prevents most misdirected-payment fraud.

Moving to ACH should not relax the controls that governed check runs. Approval routing, segregation of duties between invoice and payment approval, and pre-payment validation should all stay in place. The payment rail is changing, not the governance.

A phased rollout lowers risk further. Migrating vendors in waves, starting with high-volume, well-known suppliers, lets the process prove out before it scales. Each ACH payment should reconcile cleanly so any break is caught early.

Stampli vendor management provides a secure self-service portal where vendors submit their own banking details, W-9s, and insurance, which keeps AP from keying sensitive details from email. Organizations can define what makes a vendor payable, so payments can be blocked when required details are missing or expired.

Stampli supports multiple payment methods, including ACH and check, so vendors can move to ACH while others remain on checks during a phased rollout. Pre-payment ERP validation and safety checks run before funds move, and segregation of duties between invoice and payment approval is enforced by design.

Reconciliation ties one payment to one bank transaction and one ERP record, and every action is captured in an immutable audit trail with full context. That traceability supports both fraud control and audit as the program scales.