Electronic Payments and Services

In addition to Business Online Banking and business credit cards and debit cards, Bell Bank provides a host of other electronic tools to help your business manage cash flow.
Need assistance with our online treasury management services? Check out our guides and training.

ACH Origination Services

• Direct deposit of payroll uses automated clearing house (ACH) to electronically credit employees’ checking and/or savings accounts on an assigned date, regardless of where the accounts are located. Direct deposit of payroll is one of the most cost-effective, efficient, reliable and secure ways to pay your employees.
• Direct debits allow a business to electronically debit your consumer customer accounts using ACH, a cost-effective, efficient, reliable and secure payment system. Some common direct payments are payments for services, rents, utility bills, insurance premiums, organization membership fees and contributions.
• Corporate trade payments allow your business to electronically debit or credit trade partners’ accounts using ACH.
• ACH cash consolidation is a financial management strategy that pools cash into one central account at a single financial institution for more effective use of operating cash and investment. This tool aids your business in consolidating funds from subordinate or branch accounts at other banks into a central/master account at Bell Bank. Simply submit ACH transfers through Treasury Online Banking. We then process the transactions between Bell Bank accounts and accounts at other banks. 

Other Services

• Remote deposit lets you make deposits electronically from your office any time, without driving to the bank. Remote deposit allows your business to convert paper checks into electronic images using a desktop scanner with our Treasury Online Banking solution. It is the fastest way to turn your check deposits into cash.
• Wire transfers allow you to transfer funds while avoiding the hassle of contacting the bank and relaying detailed information. You reduce costs by lowering wiring fees, and you can initiate domestic transfers through our secure Internet banking site.
• Electronic data interchange allows your business to obtain additional ACH information necessary to post your electronic transactions, payments or receipts to your accounting system.
• Lockbox service saves you money by collecting and processing your account receivable payments. Lockbox generally involves collecting a variety of payment types, which includes business-to-business and consumer-to-business payments. Payments are mailed to and collected from a unique post office box and then processed per your instructions. You'll receive a deposit to your account and payment information that meets your needs.

Contact a treasury management team member to get started.

Sweep Accounts

Make idle cash work harder for your business! Sweeps are designed for businesses with steady cash flows in and out of their operating checking account. Learn more about how sweeps work.

How do sweeps work?

• The system automatically sweeps funds daily, based on established product parameters, such as target balance, replenishment amounts and maximum investment amounts.
• Sweep products can be customized to meet your business needs.
• If you are enrolled in Business or Treasury Online Banking, you can view sweep activity online.

We have various levels of sweep products, depending on your business’ specific treasury management needs:

• One-way: Offers overdraft or uncollected funds protection.
• Two-way: Fully automated to maximize your excess cash balances. Your checking account is linked to either a short-term investment account or to a line of credit.
• Three-way: Links three account types: checking, short-term investment and line of credit
• Money market savings sweep: Serves businesses with large deposit balances, fluctuating cash flows, significant float on deposited items, and the need to invest excess dollars automatically.
  
  

Fraud Protection

Positive Pay helps your business identify potentially fraudulent check and ACH items, and allows you to promptly instruct Bell Bank to return any such items.

Check and ACH fraud is not just a problem for large corporations, big businesses or large financial institutions; it affects businesses and banks of all sizes. In addition, business clients are subject to 24-hour return timeframes for unauthorized check and ACH transactions, as opposed to consumer clients, who have up to 60 days to return these unauthorized items. Using Positive Pay allows businesses to concentrate on what’s important – your business – with less fear of undetected forgeries, alterations and unauthorized ACH transactions.

 Features and Benefits

• Reduce exposure to check and ACH fraud by identifying potentially fraudulent items
• View check images of exception items
• Customize parameters for filtering both ACH debit and credit transactions
• Manage online exceptions to enable pay/return decisions for both check and ACH exceptions
• See online reconcilement reports on outstanding checks, paid checks and stale dated checks
• Verify presented checks at teller line

How Merchant Solutions Can Help You Grow Your Business

As your banking partner, we want to help make it easier for you to keep up with day-to-day operations and provide exceptional customer experiences, so you have more time to focus on growing your business. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Heartland, a payment processor that can offer you innovative payment and point of sale options to help you run your business better by:

• Making payments easy
• Streamlining operations
• Increasing productivity

Make Customer Payments as Easy as Possible

With Heartland on your side, you’ll be able to accept all the ways your customers prefer to pay for purchases.

• Heartland helps you take payments anywhere – including online and on the go.
• You’ll be able to process payments over any device, including a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, terminal and point-of-sale system. 
• And you’ll be able to accept any payment method, from cash and checks to credit, debit, gift cards, EMV chip cards and digital wallets.

Streamline Your Business Operations

These 3 fabulous features can help you become more efficient by streamlining your business operations:

1. Register is a simpler, smarter point-of-sale system with back office management to help you run your business better. This program gives you:

• A better checkout experience
• Reduced employee overtime
• Eliminated inventory shortages
• Simplified accounting

2. Terminal+ gives you the freedom to run your business with everything you need in an all-in-one terminal. Benefits include:

• A better checkout experience
• Intuitive sales tax calculating
• Eliminated inventory shortages
• Fraud protection

3. Mobile Pay allows you to take payments anywhere. You can even run your business from your phone! This system helps you:

• Meet your customers where they are
• Never miss a sale
• Stay on top of customer trends

Increase Your Business' Productivity

With fair and transparent processing, Heartland’s Interchange Plus pricing minimizes your payment acceptance costs to put more money in your pocket. You can save time and hassle with 24/7 customer support, where Heartland’s award-winning, U.S.-based  customer service agents answer your call in less than 30 seconds on average!

Heartland is also the only payment provider to provide a merchant bill of rights – protecting your rights by promoting fair credit, debit and prepaid processing practices.

Finally, Heartland Secure™ combines 3 powerful technologies to provide your business with the industry’s highest level of security, backed by a breach warranty, so you can keep your business – and your customers’ card data – safe. Heartland is also PCI compliant, meaning we host your data securely according to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, to minimize credit card fraud risk and provide you and your customers with peace of mind.

If you’re ready to get started or want to learn more about the fast, secure and simple options that can help your business reach its full potential, connect with a Heartland relationship manager.