Same-Day ACH Payments Mount As Nacha Reports a Robust 67.5% Growth in Volume

Faster payment volumes continue to mount in the U.S. market as Nacha, the regulatory body for the nation’s automated clearing house network, announced early Thursday same-day transaction volume grew 67.5% in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2023. That growth resulted in 355.2 million payments, compared to 212 million a year ago, according to Nacha’s figures.

In dollar terms, quarterly same-day ACH volume is getting ever closer to the $1-trillion mark, as the third quarter saw a total of $844 billion in transactions initiated and settled on the same day. That’s up nearly 39% from the third quarter last year.

Since same-day processing on the ACH started a few years ago, the network has now seen almost 4 billion same-day transactions worth $8 trillion in value, according to Nacha. “These results are continued proof of the robust adoption of same-day ACH,” noted Jane Larimer, Nacha’s president and chief executive, in a statement.

The results come as the nation has been gearing up for faster transactions on various networks, including real-time processing on The Clearing House, a network owned by many of the country’s biggest banks, and on the Real Time Payments network introduced last year by the Federal Reserve.

To allow a wider window for same-day processing, Nacha is seeking comments on its proposal to extend the service’s operating hours to close at the end of the business day in the Pacific time zone. This action would add about 3.25 hours per day to the business day for same-day operations, Nacha says. Over time, the regulatory body has taken other actions to boost same-day operations, including increasing dollar limits and expanding operating hours.

In the various payment categories Nacha tracks, the organization reported third-quarter peer-to-peer transactions rose 20% to 99.6 million, while health-care payments increased 7.8% to 132 million. Online transactions reached 2.7 billion, rising 9%, while direct deposit volume grew nearly 4% to hit 2.1 billion.