NACHA Reports a Banner 2015, With Stepped-up Growth And New Applications

The automated clearing house network reported stepped-up transaction volume with each set of quarterly statistics it released last year, and on Thursday it confirmed officially that 2015 was a banner year for growth. The payments network, which connects virtually every financial institution in the country, handled more than 24 billion transactions in 2015, growing by 1.3 billion payments or 5.6% over 2014. By contrast, the growth in 2014 was just shy of 5%.

Indeed, 2015 is the second year in a row that transactions on the network grew by 1 billion or more, according to NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based organization that governs the ACH.

The total value of ACH payments last year came to $41.6 trillion, a 4% jump over 2014’s volume.

At the same time, NACHA reported that ACH fraud remained under control. What the network calls the unauthorized debit return rate ticked up slightly in 2015, but was still a hair’s-breadth 0.03%. The ACH handled more than 11 billion debits last year, or nearly 60% of total network traffic.

Debits are so-called pull transactions, in which, for example, a consumer buying goods from a merchant might authorize the merchant to “pull” the payment from the consumer’s account. With ACH credits, the consumer takes the initiative to “push” the funds to an account belonging to the merchant or another person. The network recorded 8 billion credit transactions last year.

The WEB application, used for online payments, remained hugely popular, accounting for 21.3% of all ACH network volume (excluding on-us activity). Peer-to-peer payments using WEB credits, an application that became available only two years ago, shot up 670% in 2015, totaling 57 million transactions. WEB debits grew 12.8%, reaching 4 billion payments.

Also growing is a network capability that can combine payments with information. NACHA reports that nearly 2 billion so-called addenda records, which hold payment and other data, were processed on the network last year, up 9.1%.

“The ACH network is a unique payments system providing for robust versatility with its inherent ability to process credit and debit transactions, payments and information together, domestic and international transactions, and more,” said Janet O. Estep, NACHA’s president and chief executive, in a statement. “It is this flexibility and adaptability that has facilitated new payments capabilities to meet the evolving needs of end users, and ultimately contributed to the Network’s consistent growth.”

The 50 most active banks using the ACH to originate debits on behalf of merchants and other businesses accounted for 16.8 billion transactions, or 87% of all originated volume, NACHA reported. The 50 biggest receiving institutions accounted for 11.1 billion payments, or 57.4% of all received volume.

For now, the network is looking forward to the introduction in September of same-day clearing and settlement, a process that will unfold over an 18-month time span and replace the current next-day system. “With the advent of additional capabilities, such as P2P payments…and same-day ACH…we expect to see continued growth and advancement of the network and ACH payments.” Estep said.