Formerly PosPay

Positive pay, built the way banks actually need it.

Name: OpenClear
Author: Chaffed

OpenClear is a multi-tenant positive pay platform for checks and ACH, with payee matching, reverse positive pay, and teller verification at the branch. Extensible to other payment networks.

Start a sandbox bank View on GitHub

Free sandbox: your own bank in about a minute. Existing installs keep working after the rename.

What's inside

Everything a positive pay desk runs on

Built by someone with 20 years in bank systems, payments, and check processing, with security features rarely seen in commercial positive pay products.

Checks and ACH

Issued items, ACH transactions, stop payments, and exceptions, with a network-adapter pattern so other payment networks can be added.

Reverse positive pay

For customers who don't send issue files: every presented check comes to them to review, and a check with a real problem is never paid by silence.

Teller verification

Branches check a business customer's check before paying cash, and a cashed check is caught as a duplicate if it's presented again.

Pluggable OCR

Read check images with the OCR engine you choose, and bulk-load check images with the option to back a bulk upload out.

Optional fraud scoring

An advisory fraud-risk score from the bank's own model, trained only on its own decisions. Off until the bank turns it on, and it never decides an item.

Multi-tenant by design

Run many banks and segregate each tenant's own business customers. Per-tenant branding is included.

Security and access control

Security groups, cross-tenant access, signing keys, and the ability to query and export users for access recertification.

Immutable action log

An audit trail of actions, plus support for compliance and control testing.

JSON API

Everything is reachable at /api/v1/*, with authentication and permissions documented in the API docs.

Billing and reporting

Fee schedules, billing statements for each customer, and reporting for the people running the desk.

Deploy your way

SQLite out of the box, Postgres or MSSQL for production, Docker, reverse proxy / WAF guidance, and support for running more than one instance.

Screenshots

See it in action

A look at the daily work: watching the dashboard, clearing exceptions, reviewing ACH activity, and billing customers. Select any image to see it full size.

OpenClear dashboard showing exceptions needing attention, items due within 24 hours, and the checks due soonest with their cut-off times — **Dashboard**What needs attention today, and what's due soonest.

Exceptions queue listing checks and ACH items with the reason each one needs review — **Exceptions queue**Every check and ACH item that needs a decision, and why.

Exception review screen comparing the issued check amount with the presented amount, with a decision form — **Reviewing an exception**What was expected versus what was presented, side by side.

ACH transactions list with matched and exception statuses — **ACH transactions**Originator, amount, and match status for each debit.

OpenClear settings page with tiles for sign-in and security, decision cut-offs, dual control, fraud scoring, file layouts, integrations and compliance — **Settings**Cut-offs, dual control, security, file layouts and compliance in one place.

Customer billing statement with service codes, volumes, unit prices, and amounts due — **Billing statement**Itemized monthly fees for each customer.

Screenshots show a seeded demo bank with sample data, not real customers.

Free sandbox

Your own bank, in about a minute

Try OpenClear without installing anything. Spin up a sandbox bank and look around.

Start a sandbox bank

Sample checks
ACH payments and exceptions
An API client to try the JSON API

Quickstart

Run it on your own machine

One-click, SQLite, zero manual setup. On first run it creates a virtual environment, installs everything, runs migrations, asks you to create an organization and admin login, then starts the server and opens your browser. Every re-run just starts the server.

macOS: double-click run_openclear.command
Windows: double-click run_openclear.bat
Linux: run ./run_openclear.sh from a terminal

Prefer to skip the wrapper? Run the launcher directly on any platform:

python3 scripts/launcher.py

Get the code from github.com/chaffed/OpenClear.

Documentation

Read the docs

Full documentation, built from the repository with every release. Browse all docs.

ArchitectureData model, network-adapter pattern, matching engine rules, ML pipeline design. JSON APIEndpoints, auth, permissions, and schemas for /api/v1/*. RunbookStep-by-step setup for a new bank or a new customer. ChangelogWhat changed in each release, including the PosPay rename. ComplianceFor compliance, risk, and audit staff and examiners: maps what OpenClear does to the guidance a bank is examined against, and where the evidence is.

Positive pay guides

Positive pay, from the bank's side

Practical guides for the operations, treasury, fraud and IT staff who run positive pay at banks and credit unions.

What is positive pay?Issue files, matching, exceptions, cutoffs, and where programs break down. ACH vs. check positive payDebit filters compared with check matching, and their return deadlines. Payee positive payHow payee matching stops washed checks. Reverse positive payWhen it fits, and its weaknesses. Positive pay file formatsIssue file fields, layout examples and common errors. Exception processingDecisions, defaults, dual control and cutoff times. What examiners look forAn exam checklist and evidence pack.

Message from the author

Why OpenClear exists

This was built using Claude Code. I am not a developer/programmer. I do have 20 years of bank systems, payments, and check processing experience. This is the Positive Pay system I want. My goal is to demonstrate banking software needs to be modernized.

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