Building & Operating a TPS Program: The Six Pillars

Becoming a Third Party Sender is a business decision. Operating as one is an operations problem — and most programs underestimate it until returns, funding timelines, or an ODFI audit force the issue.

This session walks through the six operational pillars every TPS program has to stand up and keep running. Each pillar is covered practically — what the capability actually needs to do, where programs commonly get it wrong, and a short set of recommendations you can measure your own program against.

Throughout, the framework is grounded in real-world experience building and scaling a Third Party Sender program from zero to more than $1.5 billion in monthly ACH volume, including the funding-model tradeoffs, risk-hold design, and subledger decisions that are far cheaper to get right up front than to retrofit.

Who should attend: Third Party Senders and prospective TPSs, ODFI relationship and risk teams, payments operations and compliance staff, and vertical SaaS and platform companies embedding ACH.

Attendees will learn to:
• Identify the six operational capabilities required to run a compliant, scalable TPS program
• Evaluate how funding model choices (good funds vs. accelerated funding) change return exposure and the risk controls needed to offset it
• Apply practical controls — transaction and account-level limits, automatic risk holds, and the debit ? wait ? credit rule for refunds and payables
• Build the internal reporting (return rates, volume anomalies, subledger, audit logs, screening history) needed to manage the program and to defend it to an ODFI or examiner