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So-called native automated clearing house payments that originate electronically rather than by conversion of a paper check continued their robust growth in the second quarter while same-day ACH transaction volume hit $16.6 billion, reports ACH governing body NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association.
In total, the ACH network transferred 5.35 billion payments, up 5.8% from 5.05 billion in 2016’s second quarter, Herndon, Va.-based NACHA says. Dollar volume totaled $11.6 trillion, up 7%. The figures exclude on-us payments.
“We’re seeing strong growth of 7.4% in core native electronic ACH payments—direct deposits, business-to-business payments, and especially online payments,” Mike Herd, NACHA’s senior managing director of ACH network rules, tells Digital Transactions News by email. “The exchange of business remittance information also is growing robustly. Check-initiated transactions continue to decline rapidly in number, as one would expect.”
The WEB debit code for consumer online payments saw volume jump 13.2% year-over-year to 1.27 billion transactions. WEB credits, most of which are person-to-person payments, jumped 19.7% to 23.7 million transactions. Together, the WEB codes grew 13.3% and now account for just over 24% of ACH volume versus 22.5% in 2016’s second quarter.
On the flip side, the ACH codes for paper-check conversions continued their decline as consumers increasingly adopt online and card-based payment methods. ARC, the code for bill payments sent to lockboxes, saw second-quarter volume fall 9.7% year-over-year to 305.8 million transactions. POP, for check conversion at the point of purchase, decreased 11.4% to 60.2 million transactions, and BOC, for back-office conversion of checks written in stores and other merchant locations, plunged 16.9% to 26.6 million transactions.
Likely reflecting the nation’s employment growth in recent quarters, the PPD credit code used by businesses for prearranged direct deposits saw transaction volume increase 6.3% to 1.62 billion transactions. PPD debits, used for such payments as recurring fees for health clubs and homeowners’ associations, saw their volume rise 4.4% to 969.6 million transactions. The PPD codes comprise half of ACH volume.
Meanwhile, NACHA said same-day ACH volume totaled 11.9 million transactions valued at $16.6 billion in the second quarter, the third full quarter since the launch of same-day credits. Direct deposits accounted for 44% of same-day volume, followed by B2B and P2P transactions at 39% and 15%, respectively.
Next up for same-day transactions are ACH debits, set to launch in mid-September.
