The debits are why you’re reading this. Every morning, before payroll clears, before your vendors get paid, money leaves your account on a schedule set when your revenue looked completely different. You can’t negotiate anything from that position because you never have cash on hand long enough to negotiate with.
So stopping them is correct. How you stop them determines whether you gain leverage or hand it away.
The three ways this gets done
- Revocation of ACH authorization. You instruct your bank in writing to stop honoring debits from a specific originator. Banks are required to act on a timely revocation. This works, and it’s unilateral, which is exactly why it reads as default unless it’s paired with the next item.
- Enforced reconciliation. If your contract contains a reconciliation provision, and most do, you can demand that payments be recalculated against your actual receipts. Done properly, with statements attached, this reduces the payment lawfully rather than stopping it unilaterally. It’s slower and dramatically stronger.
- Negotiated forbearance. The funder agrees in writing to pause or reduce collection while a resolution is worked out. Harder to get, worth asking for, and much easier to obtain when the request arrives from someone the funder recognizes as capable.
Revocation without notice is a default. Revocation paired with a documented reconciliation demand is a position. The bank instruction is identical. The consequences are not.
The sequence that protects you
- Pull 90 days of bank statements and calculate what you were actually charged versus what your receipts should have produced under the contract formula. Overcollection is common and it’s evidence.
- Have the reconciliation demand prepared and ready to send, with the numbers attached, before you touch the bank authorization.
- Open a separate operating account at a different institution if payroll runs through the account being debited. Do this legitimately and transparently; the point is continuity of operations, not concealment.
- Send the demand. Then revoke. Order matters, because the record shows you asserted a contractual right rather than simply stopped paying.
- Expect the response. Calls, a default letter, possibly acceleration. Have your representation lined up before day one, not after.
Don’t simply close the account and go quiet. Silence reads as flight risk, and it moves your file from the collections queue to the legal queue faster than anything else you could do.
What your bank can and can’t do
Your bank must honor a timely, properly documented revocation. It isn’t required to fight your funder for you, it will charge you for returned items, and it may close a business account that generates enough returns. If the funder holds a deposit account control agreement, or your processor is splitting funds at the source, revocation alone won’t stop the flow and you need a different approach entirely.
The honest tradeoff
Stopping the debits buys you the one thing you can’t negotiate without: cash on hand and a functioning business. It also starts a clock. Anyone who tells you to stop paying and doesn’t describe that clock in specific terms, with dates and a response plan, isn’t managing your case. They’re opening a file.
Getting out of an MCA is not a DIY project. The funders have lawyers. The contracts have confessions of judgment. Someone has to read your agreements, line by line. Our #1-rated firm does that on a free call. No upfront fees.