You might need significant volume (hundreds or more per day) to make it worth switching from Balanced to something else for outgoing payments. With enough volume (10k+/month), you might get under .10/transaction. Balanced doesn't seem like they're particularly slow about outgoing payments. (from a quick scan of their site) The slowness comes from the ACH network where nothing is ever confirmed settled, it just hasn't come back returned yet.
So every Monday morning I get a file with payments. I have to move that amount over to Balanced. This can take 3 to 5 business days, but almost always takes 5 or even 6. Meaning I cannot pay my customers until the Friday (5 days) or the Monday (8 days) later.
Also, Balanced cannot process ACH for payments from clients. Having to verify an account with micro deposits is simply not workable for our clientele, many of which do not want to take credit cards because of the high fees.
While our volume right now is too low, it is interesting info to have, and something I'll look into further.
Thanks!
Depending on the risk profile of the business, we've done an array of things from 0 day simultaneous ACH credits and debits to 3 or more day holds on incoming funds (via ACH) before credits can go out. Obviously, the riskier the business, the more expensive it is to go fast. 3 day holds are pretty common, since any NSF sort of return is supposed to happen in that time frame.
-jkw
[1] https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/search?q=ach&ref=cm...
None of the payment processing providers differentiate between the two.