Are ACH transfers between individuals possible?
"Yes, many banks offer such a service. Often such payments can be made through their ""bill pay"" interface. You log in to your account on the bank's website, enter the recipient's routing and account numbers, and off you go. You could ask your bank whether they offer this. If not, you could change banks to one that does."
I use a hack to do this sort of thing: I have an ING Direct online bank account. I link both of bank accounts I want to transfer between to the ING Direct account. I transfer between them by moving money to ING direct and then from there to wherever. Any online bank that let's you link regular checking accounts would work for this. "This seems almost overkill, but if you want to... I suppose one thing you could do is create a separate money in transit account, similar to Account Payable and Account Receivable. In your bookkeeping, transfer the money from the source account to the holding account on the date that the source bank withdraws it, and then transfer the money to the destination account on the date that the target bank deposits it. This both makes it clear that there is money going between places, and ensures that the daily balance on each ""physical"" account is accurate. For cash withdrawals and deposits, I'd just use the date when you make the withdrawal, since that is the day from which the money is available in the new location rather than the old one. Note: I don't know if this is the ""proper"" way to do it in a random jurisdiction, but I doubt being this explicit can get you into trouble." If it's always the same person: Open a second account, with them as the account holder. Get them a debit card for that account. To move money, do an inter-account transfer from yours to theirs. Fast, low to no fee, simple. (For a while I had a second credit card on my account for this purpose -- the other person was a trustworthy family member -- but a debit card on its own account is cleaner and much less risky.) "I found a blogger at US News as well as some people on a forum suggesting that, if you have another bank account, you may be able to do it by using that other account to initiate an electronic funds transfer (aka ACH).  They say that even a PayPal payment may work.  However, the former says that ""whether or not this trick works can vary from bank to bank."" You could try doing that and see if it works.  I don't think there is any way to know for sure what they would consider a ""boan fide"" direct deposit without asking them, and if you ask them they will get wise to your game." Shop around for a bank that offers lower/no fees for this operation and move your account there...  or, yes, change where the direct deposit is routed... or move these accounts into a single bank so it's an internal transfer rather than ACH. Or ask the bank whether there is another way to arrange this which doesn't cost you money. (It costs me nothing to move money within my credit union, whether manually or on a scheduled basis. It costs me nothing to have them send funds to another entity from my checking account. Specific example: Pay comes into my savings account. On the 27th, an automatic transfer moves the cost of a mortgage payment from savings to checking. On the 30th, an automatic payment sends that to my mortgage in another bank. No fees on any of this, 100% reliable.) JohnFx is more experienced than I am but I have paid off friends cards before. It was as simple as asking them the routing number of the bank that gave them the card and setting up an ACH with their card number. I guess this might be against some banks T&C but the CU I used to carry out the ACH gave me the go ahead as long as I did not dispute the payment later. If the transfer is from a country in Euro region, then yes, using Does, it's possible. However if it's outside then all other details are required. Edit IBAN is used by EURO countries and is supposed to simplify things. However till its fully adopted by all countries and clearing networks, there is quite a bit of confusion and complexity for individuals.   Low Value Transfer in Euro region in EUR currency is on SEPA network that only understands IBAN and only supports EUR currency. If you are transfering within UK [both banks in UK] in GBP, it would go on BACS network that only understands SortCode+AccountNumber. There are some Banks that give you interface that take an IBAN and convert to SortCode+AccountNumber and submit to BACS. A non-cash transaction will not be a problem. The bank will have to fill out federal paperwork if there are large amounts of cash involved.  This is to stop the underground economy.  This can even extend to non-banks. If you were to walk into a car dealer or some other stores and hand them a bag  of cash they will also report it. You can do what you propose without having to transfer any money between accounts. Your girlfriend can put the furniture and landscaping on her credit card, or write checks to the stores or companies. Based on the number of questions on this site regarding how to transfer funds between banks and accounts, the mechanics of the transfer is the hard part. Resist the urge to use cash to make the transfer. That will require paperwork. Many people find that the old standard of using checks to transfer funds is easy, safe and quick. If bank B has a transfer limit set, you bet that there is a nice reason for that. Either risk of fraud, liability, client preferences, profiling, credit scoring, etc, etc. For a bank, the cost of denying something [1] is way lower than the potential damages and liabilities of allowing something to go through.  Regarding your concerns for the ACH, here is the summarized transaction walkthrough source: An Originator– whether that’s an individual, a corporation or another entity– initiates either a Direct Deposit or Direct Payment transaction using the ACH Network. ACH transactions can be either debit or credit payments and commonly include Direct Deposit of payroll, government and Social Security benefits, mortgage and bill payments, online banking payments, person-to-person (P2P) and business-to-business (B2B) payments, to name a few. Instead of using paper checks, ACH entries are entered and transmitted electronically, making transactions quicker, safer and easier.  The Originating Depository Financial institution (ODFI) enters the ACH entry at the request of the Originator.  The ODFI aggregates payments from customers and transmits them in batches at regular, predetermined intervals to an ACH Operator.  ACH Operators (two central clearing facilities: The Federal Reserve or The Clearing House) receive batches of ACH entries from the ODFI.  The ACH transactions are sorted and made available by the ACH Operator to the Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI).  The Receiver’s account is debited or credited by the RDFI, according to the type of ACH entry. Individuals, businesses and other entities can all be Receivers.  Each ACH credit transaction settles in one to two business days, and each debit transaction settles in just one business day, as per the Rules.  Take heed of this like:  The Originator initiates a direct deposit/payment transaction. In your scenario, the originator would be B. But since the transaction amount is higher than the limit, B would not even initiate the ACH transaction. The request would be denied. So the transaction would look like this: [1] Usually this cost comes down to just the processing costs of the denied transaction (and it is rather fail-fast like). For the other parties involved it may have additional costs (missed deadlines, penalties for not fulfilling an obligation, fines, etc), but for the bank that is irrelevant. Yes it should be a ACH or other electronic transfer. However, it not unusual to have checks sent for large amounts in corporate banking. Large companies don't give large checks to tellers, they have it sent to a lockbox. However, lockboxes are suited for payment of invoices and I never heard of a billion dollar invoice.  edit: Also, I believe that some of the bailouts were done in checks, but honestly I'm not 100% on that. "A ""balance transfer"" is paying one credit card with another.  You probably get offers in the mail to do this all of the time.  As other posters have noted, however, this usually comes with finance fees rather than the rewards that you get for normal purchases because it's written into your credit card agreement as a different class of transaction with different rules. I'm not sure if it's urban legend or true, but I have heard stories that suggest there were some ""loop holes"" in the earliest credit card reward plans that allowed for something like what you want.  I doubt that any plan ever allowed exactly what you've written, but I've heard stories about people buying gift cards from merchants and then using the gift cards to pay their bill.  This loop hole (if it ever existed) is closed now, but it would have allowed for essentially infinite generation of rewards at no cost to the cardholder.  The banks and credit card companies have a lot of years of experience at this sort of thing now, so the threshold for you finding something that works and conforms with the cardholder agreement is pretty small." "Why? Because they can get away with it, of course. In short - why not? You may want to read the answers to this similar question (my answer is the one accepted by the OP). Who has the money? The banks, who else. I have found that some banks are capable of sending/receiving ACH transfers faster than others. I have accounts in two banks, lets call them A and B. If I send money (push) from A to B, it may take several days. But if I decide to pull the money from A to B by originating the transaction through my account at B - the money arrives the next day! So the actual transfer only takes a night, one business day. Its just the direction that matters - if the bank has to give the money out, it will do all it can (including taking 2-3 days for ""processing"") to keep the money as long as possible. But when another bank charges them - they have no choice but to pay. By the way, bank B behaves better - when I send the money from my account at B, it arrives to A the next day as well. Try a similar experiment. Instead of originating the transaction at the sender bank - try to originate it at the receiver bank, see how long it takes then for the money to appear on your account after it disappeared from the other one." "There is no ""reason why this cannot be done"", but you can tell your friend that these actions are officially shady in the eyes of the US government. Any bank transactions with a value of $10,000 or more are automatically reported to the government as a way to prevent money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal shenanigans. ""Structuring"" bank deposits to avoid this monetary limit is a crime in and of itself.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_transaction_report" You could setup a Ally account to use solely for this. There is no minimum, no opening balance requirement, and you can do up to 6 transfers a month for free.  This would partition your money from other accounts, while giving you the flexibility to move it to other accounts with ease. Yes, a business account at Chase bank offers free incoming wire transfer fees when you keep a minimum balance of over 100k. It's the only one I have found.