Sending an ACH Prenotification

ACH Prenotifications are a non-financial message sent via the ACH network. They’re sometimes called “prenotes” or $0 ACHs.

Historically, prenotifications were used to check if an account was valid before sending a transfer. That still works (banks are likely to return a prenotification to an non-existent account number as R03 “No account”). The receiving bank is not, however, very likely to check if the accountholder’s name matches the fields in the ACH Transfer, though.

Like ACH transfers, there isn’t a positive acknowledgement from the receiving bank. submitted is the final happy-path status.

More modern approaches to checking account ownership and access include services like Plaid or sending low value microdeposits.

Lifecycle

pending_submitting	The prenotification is pending submission to the Federal Reserve.
submitted	The prenotification has been submitted to the Federal Reserve.
returned	The prenotification has been returned by the receiver.
requires_attention	A rare status set when a prenotification needs manual intervention from the Increase team. More about requires_attention.