Funds Availability and Overdraft Protection

 

Understanding Funds Availability

What is funds availability?

Funds availability refers to the point in time when a bank releases holds on deposited funds and allows you to use them for withdrawals, payments or other transactions.

What is Current Balance?

Your Current Balance is your previous day ending balance determined during nightly processing, including credits and subtracting debits hat have posted to the account in real time.

What is Available Balance?

The Available Balance is the amount that can be spent or withdrawn from your account. The Available Balance is what Northwest uses to authorize debit card transactions, real-time payments and effective June 30, 2025, make pay and return decisions on check and ACH transactions.
 

What is a Hold or pending transaction?

A Hold or pending transaction is a placeholder that reflects all known transactions that have been authorized but not posted to an account. Holds reduce the funds available for withdrawal on an account and are meant to protect customers from overdraft and fraud. Some examples are check deposits over $225 or pending debit card transactions, like security holds on hotel reservations and gas stations tend to place holds on accounts when processing a debit card transaction.
 

What is a Credit?

A Credit is a transaction that adds money to an account. This could be from direct deposit, teller transaction, ATM, online transfers or mobile deposits, merchant reimbursements and more.

 
What is a Debit?

A Debit is a transaction that subtracts money from an account. Things like one-time and recurring debit card transactions, ATM withdrawals, check payments, ACH payments or account fees.
 

What does Posted to my account mean?

Posted means that the Debit or Credit transaction has been processed and reflected in your account’s Current Balance.
 

What if I don’t have enough money in my available balance?

If you do not have enough money in your available balance, we may decline the transaction or opt to return the transaction, as applicable. If you have opted into everyday debit card coverage, Northwest may authorize and pay certain one-time debit card transactions, even when there are not enough available funds to cover the transaction. However, we do not guarantee the authorization or posting of transactions that will overdraw your account.
 
 

Pro Tips:

Ask us about our overdraft protection solutions.

Designed specially to allow customers to use their own funds from another account (Savings, Money Market, Checking, Unsecured LOC* or HELOC*) to bring their account back to a $0 Available Balance when they don’t have enough funds to authorize or pay items.

Holds appear as pending transactions in Northwest online and mobile banking. You can have a Hold on your account that ultimately does not process – think a security Hold on a hotel transaction – as a result, your Current Balance may be displayed as larger than your Available Balance.

If you write a check, or have a pre-authorized scheduled or planned withdrawal, those transactions do not show in the Current Balance or Available Balance until they’ve posted to your account.
 

Understanding Overdraft Protection

 

What is Overdraft Protection?

Overdraft protection is designed to allow customers to use their own funds (from another account like, HELOC*, checking or Savings) to bring their account back to a $0 Available Balance each night when they don't have enough funds to authorize or pay items.


How can Overdraft Protection help?

If you have added overdraft protection to your account, Northwest will transfer funds from the connected deposit account or linked line of credit to cover authorized transactions when the checking account does not have enough available funds. This type of protection automatically pulls the funds to cover account balance overdrafts. It’s designed to bring the account back to $0 if transaction overdraw the account.

 

Courtesy Overdraft 

Our Courtesy options allow Northwest to strive to pay items into overdraft up to a limit assigned to the account when they may not have enough available funds to cover the transaction.

Courtesy Overdraft Full

An add-on to our Standard Courtesy Overdraft, this option includes everything covered under Courtesy Overdraft Standard PLUS Northwest may authorize everyday debit card transactions when you don't have enough money in your checking account at the time you use your card.
 
MUST opt-in for this service

Courtesy Overdraft Standard

For when the unexpected happens. Under this option and for a fee, Northwest may pay check/ACH /recurring debit card transactions into overdraft instead of returning items, up to the limit assigned by the Courtesy Overdraft system. ** Automatically enrolled for all Affinity Checking, Affinity Plus Checking and Affinity Premier Checking accounts.
 

**We pay overdrafts at our discretion, which means we do not guarantee that we will authorize and pay any type of transaction.

Full Program Opt-Out

An opt-out selection for those that do not want to be enrolled in either one of our Courtesy Overdraft options.
 
MUST opt-out to ensure full program is removed
 
ALL check and ACH items will be returned and charged a $37 Overdraft –Returned Item Fee. All debit card authorizations will be declined if there are not enough available funds in the account at the Point of Sale.

*Line of Credit subject to application and approval, Line of Credit balances are subject to interest charges. See Overdraft Protection Agreement for details.

Courtesy Overdraft Limits are variable and subject to change. Not available for Basic Checking, Student Checking or Health Savings Accounts. Also available for Signature Checking and Priority Checking. Select Ownership Codes are not eligible for Courtesy Overdraft.

Some debit card transactions may be presented as "Must Pay Items" which requires that the bank pay the item. If we are required to pay an item that overdrafts your account, you may be charged an Overdraft Fee.

Consumer Accounts Only