You may establish your own ACH (Automated Clearing House) account directly with Customs and Border Protection. Not only will you save on disbursement fees but you will also have a single point of contact for ACH issues and greater visibility to your import activity. Best of all, as a client, we will set it up for you FREE OF CHARGE. With ACH, the payer (Importer) transmits payment authorization to CBP, generally via the customs broker. Using this method, your funds go directly from your bank into CBP's account. It is a direct payment of duties, taxes and fees to CBP by you. We simply, verify for accuracy and authorize the payment to CBP on your behalf. Benefits of ACH Take advantage of additional 10 days to pay duties, taxes, and fees Reduce administrative costs. Reduce administrative errors Eliminate the problem of lost checks Control cash flow by identifying the exact day to allocate funds. Here's how it works: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) generates a preliminary statement of entry summaries scheduled for payment and transmits it to UCSI through ABI. Next, we will review the preliminary statement for accuracy. We then transmit the payment authorization to CBP. CBP takes no payment steps until the ACH payment authorization is received and accepted. If the ACH payment authorization transmission is error free, we receive a message that the authorization has been accepted by CBP. After ACH payment authorization is approved, funds transfer begins. The Importer's account is debited usually two business days after CBP accepts the initial payment authorization. ACH is secure. A unique payer unit number is assigned to each payer (Importer) and is used for all ACH transactions. For security reasons, CBP does not store bank account information in ACS. CBP keeps only your ACH payer number Only the filer (UCSI) who originally transmitted the customs entries to CBP can transmit the payment authorization. To participate, you must file entries through ABI using statement processing, and your financial institution must be a U.S. bank NACHA participant with Electronic Data Interchange capability. Importer payers must also have a Federal tax ID number or social security number.
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