Does Reg CC Apply to Business Accounts? Coverage and Exceptions

Yes. Regulation CC applies to business accounts on the same terms it applies to personal accounts. If your corporation, LLC, partnership, nonprofit, or sole proprietorship holds a checking account, share draft account, or any other transaction account that lets you pay third parties, the bank must follow the same funds-availability schedules, disclosure rules, and notice requirements that protect individual depositors. There is no size threshold, no transaction-volume cutoff, and no industry exemption.

Why the Rule Reaches Business Accounts

The coverage comes from two definitions in the regulation. An “account” is any deposit at a bank from which the holder can make payments or transfers to third parties, including demand deposit accounts, negotiable order of withdrawal accounts, and share draft accounts. A “customer” is any “person” holding such an account, and “person” explicitly includes corporations, unincorporated companies, partnerships, government units, trusts, and any other entity or organization.¹ If the account is a transaction account, Reg CC governs it regardless of who owns it.

The dollar figures in the regulation were most recently adjusted on July 1, 2025, so any deposits your business makes in 2026 are working with the updated thresholds.²

What Your Business Gets From Coverage

The core protection is a schedule the bank has to meet. Cash deposited in person, wire transfers, and ACH credits must be available by the business day after the banking day of deposit. So must Treasury checks, postal money orders, Federal Reserve and Federal Home Loan Bank checks, state and local government checks deposited in the state that issued them, and cashier’s, certified, and teller’s checks, when they are deposited in person to a bank employee and into an account held by the payee.³

On top of that, the first $275 of any other check deposits on a given banking day must be available by the next business day.³ That figure rose from $225 to $275 on July 1, 2025.² Everything else runs on a two-business-day schedule for checks drawn on a bank in the same Federal Reserve check-processing region and a five-business-day schedule for checks drawn on a bank in a different region.⁴ Most vendor and customer checks a business handles will fall on the two-day track.

The deposit channel matters. A check that would qualify for next-day availability if handed to a teller gets bumped to second-business-day availability when deposited through the mail, a lockbox, or a mobile deposit app.³ Deposits at a nonproprietary ATM face the longest standard hold: funds don’t have to be available until the fifth business day, and the $275 first-day rule doesn’t apply.⁵ Cutoff times shift the clock too. Banks can set a 2:00 p.m. or later cutoff for in-branch deposits and noon or later for ATM and remote deposits, and a deposit after the cutoff, or on a weekend or holiday, counts as made on the next banking day.

Exceptions Businesses Run Into More Often

Reg CC lets banks extend holds under several safeguard exceptions listed in 12 CFR § 229.13. Businesses trip these more often than consumers because business deposits tend to be larger and involve less familiar payors.

Large Deposits

When the checks you deposit on a single banking day total more than $6,725, the bank can apply an extended hold to the amount above that threshold.² The first $6,725 runs on the normal schedule. The excess can be held up to five additional business days for local checks or six additional business days for nonlocal checks.⁶ A five-figure local-check deposit can end up held for roughly seven business days.

New Accounts

An account counts as new for its first 30 calendar days. During that window, cash, electronic payments, and the first $6,725 of next-day-eligible checks still get next-day availability, but any amount above $6,725 from those items can be held until the ninth business day after deposit.⁷ Other checks into a new account have no guaranteed timeline beyond the standard schedule plus the exception extensions. If you just switched business banks, plan for tight cash flow that first month.

Repeatedly Overdrawn Accounts

A bank can suspend the standard schedules for an account it considers repeatedly overdrawn. The triggers are a negative balance (actual or as-if-all-items-posted) on six or more banking days in the preceding six months, or a negative balance of $6,725 or more on two or more banking days in the preceding six months.⁶ Once either trigger is hit, the exception can run for six months after the last overdraft.

Reasonable Cause and Redeposited Checks

A bank can extend a hold when it has specific, articulable reasons to believe a check won’t be paid. A vague hunch doesn’t qualify. The Federal Reserve’s compliance guide lists examples like postdated checks, checks more than six months old, and checks the paying bank has said it will not honor.⁷ A check that previously bounced and is being deposited a second time can be held under the same extended timeframes as a large deposit.

Available Is Not the Same as Cleared

This is where business owners get burned. Reg CC forces banks to release funds on a schedule, but that schedule has nothing to do with whether the check has actually been paid by the issuing bank. Your bank might release $10,000 on the second business day because the local-check rule requires it while the paying bank still has time to return the item. If the check bounces after you’ve spent the money on payroll or inventory, your bank will pull the funds back out of your account. Reg CC protects you against unreasonable delay. It does not protect you against a bad check.

Disclosures and Hold Notices You Should Receive

Your bank has to give you a written disclosure of its funds-availability policy, clear and grouped together rather than buried in other account terms, and it must post its general policy where employees accept deposits.⁸

When the bank puts an exception hold on a specific deposit, it owes you a separate written notice that identifies the account, the date of the deposit, the dollar amount being delayed, the specific reason the exception was invoked, and the date the funds will become available.⁶ For an in-person deposit, that notice should be handed to you at the time. If the bank decides to hold after you’ve left, it must send the notice no later than the first business day after the facts supporting the hold become known.⁵ A notice that says only “bank policy” without naming a recognized exception and explaining why it applies may not satisfy the regulation.

What You Can Recover If the Bank Gets It Wrong

A bank that violates the funds-availability rules in Subpart B is liable to the affected customer for actual damages caused by the violation, plus statutory damages of between $125 and $1,350 for an individual claim, plus attorney’s fees and costs.⁹ Because “person” under the regulation includes corporations, partnerships, and other entities, those remedies run to business account holders too.¹

For a business, the actual-damages piece is often the larger number. Lost vendor discounts, late-payment penalties, and missed payroll obligations traceable to an improper hold can all count. If you believe your bank is holding funds longer than Reg CC allows, you can file a complaint through the Federal Reserve, which accepts complaints from businesses and will investigate directly or forward the matter to the appropriate federal regulator depending on who charters your bank.¹⁰

1
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.2 – Definitions
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Availability of Funds and Collection of Checks (Regulation CC) Threshold Adjustments
3
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.10 – Next-Day Availability
4
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.12 – Availability Schedule
5
eCFR. 12 CFR Part 229 – Availability of Funds and Collection of Checks (Regulation CC)
6
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.13 – Exceptions
7
Federal Reserve Board. A Guide to Regulation CC Compliance
8
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.15 – General Disclosure Requirements
9
eCFR. 12 CFR 229.21 – Civil Liability
10
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. I Have a Problem With My Bank – How Do I File a Complaint Against It