Discover our latest AI-powered innovations around faster payments, smarter workflows, and real-time visibility.Learn more →

Learn

What is a Deposit Account Control Agreement?

Welcome to Learn, where we provide straightforward, easy-to-understand definitions of the payments industry.

Follow us

When businesses borrow funds, their lenders have options for protecting against the risks of extending credit. For lenders who accept collateral from a borrower, one way to manage risk is through a Deposit Account Control Agreement or DACA.

How do DACA accounts work?

A DACA account is typically a tri-party agreement between a bank, its customer (the borrower), and its customer’s secured creditor (the lender).

The DACA serves to perfect a lender’s security interest in the funds in the borrower’s deposit accounts. With a tri-party DACA, a lender can disburse lent funds to an account of the bank that (unless as otherwise noted below) the borrower can use for its business operations.

Types of deposit account control agreements

There are two recognized kinds of DACAs: passive and active.

  • Passive DACAs, also called “springing” or “shifting” DACAs: Allow borrowers to use funds disbursed by the lender for its business operations In this situation, the lender does not direct how the funds in the joint account are used. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can assume control over the account and instruct the bank to revoke the borrower’s ability to make transactions using funds in the account.
  • Active DACAs, or blocked account control agreements (BACA): Only the lender, not the borrower, can make transactions.

DACA account requirements

All DACAs need to meet requirements under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (the UCC), the model statute governing secured transactions adopted in all 50 US States. In order to protect a creditor’s security interest in a deposit account, the creditor must establish “control” (a UCC term) of that account, meaning the bank will comply with the lender’s instructions without the borrower’s consent, without additional restrictions from third parties.

Banks often have their own standard DACA templates and the American Bar Association also released a model DACA. In both cases, the DACAs are designed to meet UCC requirements.

Try Modern Treasury

See how smooth payment operations can be.

Talk to sales
More from

Learn

Learn topic image

Bank accounts are monetary repositories maintained by a financial institution.

A clearing account acts as a temporary account that holds transactions before they are finalized or allocated to the correct permanent account.

Read more

Lockboxes are secure bank-run mailing locations where businesses can redirect their paper-check payments, allowing banks to take over the depositing process.

Read more

Virtual accounts are unique account numbers assigned within traditional, physical bank accounts, which are also known as settlement accounts. They can be used to send and receive money on behalf of the settlement account.

Read more

Implementing a multi-bank strategy is vital for companies looking to reduce risk exposure. In this article we explain how to reduce financial risk by implementing bank redundancy.

Read more

The Federal Deposit Insurance Commission was created in 1933 to reinforce the public’s trust in the American banking system. Since the Great Depression, it has successfully prevented widespread loss of consumer deposits in the event of a banking crisis.

Read more

The Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC) was created to protect deposit holders in the event of a bank failure. In this article we explain how FDIC receiverships work.

Read more

A Client Money Account (CMA) is an account opened by a UK and European Economic Area regulated firm to hold money that belongs to one or more of that institution’s clients.

Read more

When businesses borrow funds, their lenders have options for protecting against the risks of extending credit.

Read more

Popular in the banking and finance world, penny tests are a simple way to verify the validity of a bank account or bank integration, prior to a large finance transaction taking place.

Read more

Sweep accounts are a particular type of bank account where funds are automatically transferred between different accounts to optimize the use of available cash and maximize returns

Read more

An FBO account, or a For Benefit Of account, allows a company to manage funds on behalf of—or for the benefit of—one or more of their users, without assuming legal ownership of the account.

Read more