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The value of payments on the automated clearing house network grew by more than $1 trillion in 2019 for the seventh straight year and transactions increased by more than 1 billion for the fifth consecutive year, ACH governing body Nacha reported Monday.
Total payments came to 24.7 billion transactions, up 7.7% from 2018, with a value of $55.8 trillion, an 8.9% increase. Herndon, Va.-based Nacha said 2019’s growth represented a 12-year high.
Increases in some major transaction types were direct deposits of payroll and other payments, up 6% to 7.2 billion payments; Internet, 13.3% to 6.7 billion; business-to-business payments, 12% to 4 billion; health care, 11.9% to 343.2 million; and person-to-person payments, 18.9% to 153 million.
Same-day ACH saw big growth with 250.4 million total transactions valued at $247 billion, up 41% and 55% respectively. Same-day credit payments tallied 147.7 million transactions with a value of $145 billion, while same-debit debits posted 102.7 million transactions valued at $102 billion. Credits allow users to push payments from their bank accounts to those of their payees. Debits enable businesses, such as billers, to pull funds from customers’ accounts.
“Same-day ACH is an important part of the modern ACH network, and it is being embraced as the demand grows for faster payments,” Nacha president and chief executive Jane Larimer said in a statement. “The next enhancement to same-day ACH arrives in March, when the dollar limit per payment will quadruple to $100,000. This will make same-day ACH even more attractive to consumers and to businesses of all sizes.”
Nacha said use of same-day ACH for direct deposits rose 117% from 2018 to 77.6 million payments last year. Additionally, 2019 saw 51.7 million B2B same-day payments, up 47.5%.
