Liminal Insights Report

Link Index for Friendly ACH in Banking 2025

ACH disputes are becoming the new pressure point in payments risk. See which vendors are moving from manual reversals to real-time, prevention-first controls.

11/24/25

Report Overview

Friendly ACH (Automated Clearing House) fraud has become one of the most persistent and complex challenges in banking. Disputed payments drain revenue, slow operations, and raise regulatory pressure as fraudsters exploit weak authentication, while manual-heavy workflows make the problem worse.

For many institutions, delayed detection still makes real-time response difficult, and 60% say manual review is stretching their teams thin. And even with budgets increasing, progress is slowed by mismatched taxonomies and opaque AI systems that make it hard to scale.

As a result, the focus is shifting from cleaning up disputes after the fact to preventing fraudulent reversals before they happen, while still keeping pace with rising ACH volume.

The 2025 Link Index for Friendly ACH in Banking gives CISOs, CROs, and Heads of Payments a clear view of who is solving the real problems. We evaluated leading vendors against buyer criteria like scalability, accuracy, and data quality. From that review, 16 leaders stood out for their ability to deliver layered defenses that combine stronger authentication, behavioral analytics, automated dispute detection, and real-time return code integration.

Key Takeways:

Detection delays create exposure 47% of practitioners cite delayed detection as a barrier to real-time prevention.
Manual-heavy workflows slow response: 60% of teams identify manual review as a key operational strain.
AI adoption faces trust barriers: Only 16% of practitioners view explainability as a benefit, limiting adoption despite adaptability gains.
Budgets and vendor use are climbing:ACH fraud prevention budgets are projected to grow 10% annually, with vendor adoption expected to expand 25%.
Real-time tools are becoming standard:79% expect real-time return code integration in fraud systems, and scalability, accuracy, and data quality rank as the top purchasing criteria.

Methodology
The Link Index offers a detailed analysis and ranking of leading vendors for specific use cases, leveraging robust data and insights from Liminal’s market and competitive intelligence platform, Link. Liminal’s research team invites solution providers to participate in a company survey and analyst briefing. It uses a proprietary framework to assess and rank product capabilities based on their relevance to market needs. Liminal’s Digital Identity Landscape taxonomy and ontology are central to the Link Index, which precisely evaluates vendor solutions by buyer demand, product capability, and market presence. Liminal conducts a rigorous survey among buyers in the vendor selection process to identify the most in-demand product capabilities and the most valued product components. Market presence criteria included buyer satisfaction, market penetration, and brand recognition. The Link Index was designed to be used to inform go-to-market strategy and execution and provide guidance for solution buyers, specifically:
- Executives in corporate strategy
- Leaders of go-to-market execution
- Practitioners of solution implementation