Small Business Owners Pay Extra Just to Get Their Own Money — Congress Has a Fix

A landscaper in Ohio closes out a $4,000 job on a Friday afternoon. The money is his — he earned it, invoiced it, and the client paid. But if he wants it in his account before Monday so he can make payroll, he has to pay a fee to get it faster. That scenario plays out constantly across the country: nearly 3 in 5 small business owners, 59%, paid an extra fee for an instant transfer or fast deposit in the past year, according to the QuickBooks 2026 Late Payments Report.

It's not a small annoyance. It's a recurring tax on cash flow that hits the businesses least able to absorb it. Now a bipartisan bill in Congress, the Payments Access and Consumer Efficiency Act, or the PACE Act, is aiming directly at the plumbing that creates those fees in the first place.

Why You're Paying to Access Your Own Money

The delay isn't really about your bank being slow on purpose. It's about how money moves through the U.S. financial system. Most nonbank payment companies — the apps and platforms many small businesses use for invoicing, payroll, and payouts — don't have direct access to the Federal Reserve's settlement networks. Instead, they have to route transactions through a bank intermediary, which adds time, complexity, and cost at every step.

Nearly half of small business owners, 49%, say standard payment processing times create critical or moderate cash-flow gaps for their business, based on the same research cited in coverage of the bill. When you're running tight margins and covering payroll, rent, and suppliers on a rolling basis, a two- or three-day settlement delay isn't abstract — it's the difference between making payroll on time and scrambling for a short-term loan to cover the gap.

What the PACE Act Would Actually Change

Introduced in April 2026 by Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) and Young Kim (R-CA), the PACE Act would let qualifying nonbank payment providers connect directly to the Federal Reserve's core payment rails — Fedwire, the instant-payment service FedNow, and FedACH — instead of going through a bank as a middleman.

To qualify, a payment company would need to register as a "qualified payment company" under a new federal supervisory framework administered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That status would come with real strings attached: providers would have to maintain 1:1 reserves against customer funds, meet risk-management and recordkeeping standards, and submit to ongoing federal oversight — protections designed to prevent a repeat of past fintech failures where customer money wasn't fully backed.

In practice, cutting out the bank intermediary is what could shrink both the delay and the fee. If a payment provider can settle directly on Fed rails, there's less reason to charge a premium for "instant" or "same-day" service, because the underlying transfer no longer has to clear through an extra layer of infrastructure.

The White House Is Already Looking at the Same Question

The PACE Act isn't happening in isolation. In May 2026, a White House executive order directed the Federal Reserve to evaluate what it would take to give nonbank companies direct access to its payment systems — essentially the same structural question the bill is trying to answer through legislation rather than regulation. Having both the executive branch and a bipartisan pair of House members pushing on the same lever suggests this issue has more momentum than a typical single-sponsor bill.

The legislation has also picked up support from industry groups including the Financial Technology Association, the Blockchain Association, the Digital Chamber, and the Crypto Council for Innovation — a signal that payment and fintech companies see real upside in qualifying for direct access once the framework is in place.

What This Means for Your Business Right Now

The PACE Act is still a bill, not a law. It has to clear committee, a floor vote in the House, and then the Senate before anything changes for the fees you're paying today. That means the immediate, practical fix isn't waiting on Congress — it's tightening how your business manages the cash-flow gaps that make instant-transfer fees feel necessary in the first place.

• Reconcile your profit and loss statement monthly, not quarterly, so a cash crunch shows up on your radar before it becomes an emergency.
• Compare what your business bank account charges for instant transfers versus standard ACH — some banks have started waiving these fees for business customers to stay competitive.
• Build a short buffer, even a small one, so you're not reflexively paying a rush fee every time a client pays late.
• If cash-flow gaps are a recurring pattern rather than a one-off, a short-term option like an SBA loan or line of credit may cost less over a year than repeated instant-transfer fees.

The Bigger Picture

Payment infrastructure rarely makes headlines, but it quietly shapes how much friction a small business owner absorbs just to get paid for work already done. The PACE Act is a bet that opening up direct access to the Fed's rails — under real oversight — can lower that friction without introducing new risk. Whether it becomes law this session or not, the fact that both a bipartisan bill and a White House executive order are targeting the same fee structure suggests small business owners aren't the only ones who've noticed they're paying extra just to touch their own money.

For now, the smartest move is tracking which of your current payment tools charge for speed, and whether that cost is actually buying you anything your cash-flow planning couldn't handle on its own.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash