The ACH network, known as the backbone of the US payments infrastructure, is evolving to become a flexible, programmable, and fraud-aware payment rail. This is to ensure the needs of new business models are met across on-demand payouts, gig economy payments, or instant lending disbursements. The expansion of Same Day ACH and the increase of transaction limits to $1 million, is a substantial shift for digital payments in the US. Agile development and scalable workflows should be prioritised, especially as ACH starts to be used for payments across business models that involve complexities such as split payments, multi-party reconciliation, or recurring bills. ACH will remain the underlying rail, but with enhancements such as support for virtual accounts, automated exception handling, and accurate reconciliation, ubiquity can be bolstered. In line with this, it is important to reiterate that while ACH is not a real-time network, it is to its advantage that it is a key component of the multi-rail engine. ACH will continue to be the backup mechanism when instant payments fail and an option when requiring a cost-effective method for recurring and batch transfers. Taira Hall, head of payments strategy at Citizens, highlighted that the “ACH network’s focus on speed and availability” will be an “evolution catalyst of the payments landscape with the potential to unlocked new use cases for emerging businesses.”