ACH Transaction Growth Cooled Slightly but Still Remained Strong in 2015’s Fourth Quarter

The automated clearing house network’s strong growth run continued in 2015’s fourth quarter, exceeding 5% for the fourth quarter in a row.

ACH governing body NACHA recently reported that total network volume hit 4.98 billion transactions, up 5.5% from 4.72 billion in 2014’s fourth quarter. While strong, the growth rate was slightly cooler than the third quarter’s 5.9% increase.

Once again leading the way in growth were transaction categories associated with one-time and recurring consumer payments. For example, the WEB credit code, which is used for person-to-person payments, grew 225% year over year to 17.1 million transactions. WEB debits, one of the so-called e-check codes and used for online transactions, increased 13.8% to 1.09 billion transactions.

Another fast-growing transaction code was IAT, for international ACH transactions. IAT had 20.5 million transactions, up 18.9%.

Prearranged payment and deposit (PPD) debit transactions, which are used for recurring payments to charities, health clubs, homeowners’ associations, and other billers, increased 5% to 916.3 million transactions. Their cousin, PPD credits, for direct-deposits of payroll, Social Security and other payments, grew a modest 1% to 1.46 billion transactions and continued their reign as the ACH’s biggest payment category by far.

In addition to WEB debits, which is NACHA’s second-largest code by volume, another growing e-check code is TEL, for telephone-based ACH payments. TEL’s fourth-quarter volume came in at 119.6 million transactions, up 12% from a year earlier.

But the e-check codes for transactions originating with paper checks all continued their long-running declines as consumers shuck checks in favor of online or mobile channels for both bill payments and point-of-sale purchases. ARC, the code for lock-box conversions of checks for bill payments, declined 5.7% to 361 million transactions.

POP, for ACH transactions at the point of purchase, saw its count fall 13.2% to 78.4 million. And the BOC code for back-office conversion of checks, typically by high-volume retailers such as supermarkets and big-box stores or processors acting on their behalf, slipped 10.7% to 37.4 million.

Herndon, Va.-based NACHA is expected to release full-year volume statistics when its Payments 2016 conference kicks off next month in Phoenix.