ACH/EFT/Business to business payment

Hi. This is my first post so please forgive me if I've got it in the wrong forum or somthing.

I'm starting an e-commerce business after years of developing and designing sites for my clients. My questions as I begin to incorporate involve the business end of things. I can do the design + technical steps that need to be done to bring the business online as I've done it before numerous times. However, I am having trouble sorting out some of the incorporation/taxation/legal/banking issues. My question specifically relates to how I should look for a system to handle payments to the vendors for the items that are sold. Since this is a virtual business (similar to a box office ticketing system) in which the funds are received through a merchant account, I will retain my portion of the sale as fees and then distribute the remaining portion of the sale to the vendors. I will want to offer direct deposit to their bank accounts when the onsale period ends via an ACH system or an online system like paypal.com (but NOT paypal!).

So, does anyone have real world experience using ACH/Electronic Funds Transfer/Business to business payments for themselves or their clients? I'm researching a way that a business (my e-store, for example) could use this systme to distribute electronic payments quickly to their vendors bank accounts.

I found a german comany called anypay.com that seems to offer exactly what I'm looking for: direct transfer from one bank account to another. No waiting periods to withdraw funds, no depositing to a third party anypay account, no need for the other party to have an anypay account, etc. The fee is $.25 per transaction and no recurring monthly fees. Now that sounds like what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I can't really find much info on them and their terms of service are in German. I'm in the US and would like to use a US company unless there is a compelling reason not to. So far, they seem like the closest thing to what I'm looking for, though.

If anypay can do it, why aren't other companies doing the same?

It also seems that http://www.checkfreecorp.com might have a service like this but I can't find anything specific about it. This service looks really good with many options, but their site (http://www.checkfreecorp.com) is really confusing and I can't figure out which service would do what I need. The price quotes I did get ($12.95/month includes 35 transactions + $2.95 for every 10 transactions after that) came from calling their support center, but I don't think the guy knew exactly what I was looking for and that system seemed to take a couple of days for delivery of payment. But, the pricing plan seems comprable to what I'm looking for. I guess I'll have to get in touch with an actual sales person to see if they can explain for me.

Other options might be http://www.paymenttech.net or one of the services that http://clearcommerce.com provides through its partners.

It seems like the only existing systems that do this type of stuff are affiliate payment type systems, which all seem to be really bad in terms of ridiculous costs and long lag times for delivery.

Does this bring up any other ideas for anyone? Does anyone have experience with a system like this?

To summarize, I need:

1. Sales through website will be made by standard merchant account and deposited to my bank account.
2. Looking for instant transfer of funds from one US bank account to another to pay my vendors.
3. Reasonable fees in the range of $.50 per transaction or less if possible.
4. Monthly fees of up to about $20 that are applied to the first x transactions per month.
5. I would be doing about 5-20 payments per day every day. Maximum one per vendor per day.

Thanks in advance.

You pose a great question and one I searched for an answer for myself for quite some time. We are working towards developing an online booking management service for a particular industry we have vast experience in. When it came time to figure out how to allow our clients receive payments from their customers we ran into problems. Receiving the payment for our clent is no problem as you mentioned a standard merchant account will do the trick. The next step is difficult.

We want to do the same thing you have mentioned -- electronically transmit their money into their bank account using ACH. I searched and searched and searched! I called Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc. Nobody could answer my questions and then I finally called a company that has a solution just as we want. To make a long story short.. I was informed they go through Bank of America and it is a simple ACH service that uses EDL. You provide the bank with an electronic document that meets their requirements and provides them with bank accounts, routing numbers, amount, etc and they transfer the funds for you.

This would be a service of your bank and you would need a bank account with the bank. I had trouble finding the proper person within our banks corporate headquarters to speak with but your best bet is to contact the corporate headquarters. Our bank would charge $20/month and I believe $.10/transaction. The only problem you will run into is that banks are touchy when allowing companies to "tap" into their ACH system as they are liable for it. For example, when you submit your EDL and they release the money.. they are doing that a day or two before they take the money from your account. What if the money isn't there? You see the problem with this system for the bank. If you do not have a longstanding relationship with the bank you might have trouble getting this service. Who knows?

Let me know what you think of this information.

Digix