LaDonna Kolling, left, talks with ACH Alert Executive Vice President Alan Lane at the office in Ooltewah.• Name: ACH Alert
• Location: Transport Lane in Ooltewah
• Contact information: The company is online at ACHAlert.com and can be reached at 866-265-8961.
• Product: Monitoring of automated clearing house transactions such as automatic payroll deductions or monthly gym membership payments. The service is available for banks, businesses and individuals, alerting users to transactions that have not been specified as expected. ACH Alert streamlines the process when users want to deny a transaction, saving them a trip to the bank.
• Age: A provisional patent was filed for the system in January 2008, and the patent was issued in July.
• Startup investment: Several million dollars
• Target market: Though the system can be used by individuals, most of the business comes from banks. Individuals have weeks to dispute fraudulent ACH transactions, but businesses are only given a 24-hour window. "Typically businesses, when they get hit, it's for a much bigger dollar amount than consumers," company CEO Debbie Peace said. "Because so much money moves ACH and because those transfers affect checking accounts and savings accounts, there's exposures in dollar amounts."
• Biggest hurdle: Getting the patent approved. From development to marketing, the process to get ACH Alert started took about four years.
• Biggest reward: Seeing the system used by both big and small banks. Banks as local as Capital Mark and as large as Regions started offering the product to their business clients, saying the system significantly changes ACH protection. "This really took it to the next level," said Connie Livingston, vice president of treasury management products at Regions Bank. "We were handling this issue in an off-line basis and our clients had no ability to manage what ACH debits they were going to allow in their account, so we gave them a tool that puts the ability in their hands."