CSG Forte

CSG Forte is the payments arm of CSG Systems International, and it is an ACH house first and a card processor second. The business started in 1998 as ACH Direct in Allen, Texas, took the Forte Payment Systems name in 2013, and was acquired by CSG on October 2, 2018. CSG added iCheckGateway, sold as iCG Pay, in June 2024 for $17 million upfront plus earn-outs, and folded it into the same brand. Ownership changed again on May 14, 2026, when NEC's Netcracker subsidiary completed a take-private of CSG. The current brand is CSG Forte; the operating entity, CSG Forte Payments, Inc., is a licensed US money transmitter under NMLS ID 1986669, with a separate Quebec-licensed Canadian entity. The company reports 175,000 merchants, 260 million transactions and more than $195 billion in annual payments volume.

Pricing and how it works

Forte does not publish a rate card. Its partner materials describe a tiered schedule with preferred pricing tiers for both ACH and card volume, quoted per merchant after underwriting. Third-party listings converge on roughly $0.25 per ACH debit and cards near 2.9% + $0.31 for Visa, Mastercard and Discover, with American Express closer to 3.15%. The same listings show a $2.50 monthly gateway fee and a $29.99 monthly charge for merchants who do not validate PCI compliance. Treat all of it as reported figures rather than quotes. What Forte does publish is its ACH per-occurrence schedule: $25 per chargeback, $25 per reversal, $35 for account maintenance, $35 for a written statement of unauthorized debit retrieval, $35 for early funding and $55 per recall. Funding is the other thing to price. Standard ACH carries a three to five business day transaction review hold and settlement can run to six business days. Accelerated, Expedited and Next Day Funding cut the hold to two days, one day and roughly one business day respectively, billed as a monthly fee scaled to processed volume. Same-day ACH has a 4:45 pm ET submission cutoff.

What CSG Forte is not

It is not a high-risk acquirer and it is not a flat-rate card aggregator. The verticals it underwrites are billing-heavy and low-dispute: municipalities, utilities, insurers, healthcare providers, landlords, tolling authorities and subscription software. It is also not three separate companies. Forte Payment Systems, ACH Direct and iCG Pay all resolve to the same business today, which matters when you turn up old documentation or a legacy support number.

Who it is for

Organizations that bill recurring amounts to bank accounts rather than cards, where a flat $0.25 debit beats a percentage rate on a $300 utility bill or an $1,800 rent payment, and where account validation and NSF recovery change collections more than checkout conversion does. Forte's verification stack checks account ownership against a database of more than 596 million records, and its automated recovery re-presents failed debits up to twice within Nacha rules, recovering around 60% on average. Card-led ecommerce sellers with small basket sizes will do better elsewhere. So will anyone who needs settled funds the next morning and does not want to pay for a faster funding tier.