New account for receiving sponsor payments via wire or ACH

We have opened a new bank account for receiving sponsorship payments via international wire transfer or US domestic ACH/”direct deposit”.

Issues arose earlier this year with some fraud attempts on the bank account we had been using to receive funds; luckily, no money was lost. When reviewing our options on how to prevent future fraud attempts, we were disappointed to learn about some limits to how far we could “lock down” that particular type of bank account. This moved us to switch to a bank account “product” that provides more powerful security options.

One benefit of this change is that the new account will be a “zero-balance account” and all funds will be “swept” to the account we use for sending payments to vendors at the end of every day. This will make the new account even more resistant to fraud, and will also save us administrative time.

I’ve changed the payment instructions on the handbook page, and the instructions that we add to every sponsor invoice will be changed by the end of today.

We’ll keep the old account active until we’ve received funds for most of the invoices already sent with the old payment instructions (hopefully no longer than September), and then we’ll notify sponsors with outstanding invoices of the revised payment instructions.

If you have questions about this decision or the transition process, please ask in a comment on this post! 🙂

#deputies, #finances