Same-Day ACH Payments Top One Million Per Day in Q4

Same-day ACH continued its rapid growth in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to new numbers from ACH Network operator NACHA.

The Herndon, Va.-based organization said this week that 71.3 million same-day ACH payments occurred in the fourth quarter of 2019, which was a 39% jump from the prior year.

“With this impressive performance in the fourth quarter, it’s evident that the modern ACH Network is thriving,” Nacha President/CEO Jane Larimer said.

“The fourth quarter was the first full quarter in which the volume of same-day ACH payments exceeded one million per day. We’re delighted to see the growing acceptance of same-day ACH among businesses and consumers,” Larimer added.

Overall ACH Network volume during the fourth quarter also grew, rising to 6.4 billion payments. That marked an 8.1% increase over the fourth quarter of 2018. Most of the payments — 3.7 billion — were debits; the other 2.7 billion were credits, according to the data. Together they moved nearly $14.7 billion, which was 10.6% more money than in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Business-to-business payments grew as well. For the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of those payments topped one billion, which was a 12.6% increase over the fourth quarter of 2018. Direct deposit also rose 7.6% to 1.8 billion payments.

Health care payments and person-to-person payments through the network rose 12.1% and 13.4%, respectively, during the quarter as well.

The results followed significant changes to the same-say ACH system over the past few years, including adding settlement windows, augmenting features and making funds available sooner.

However, Nacha also has more tweaks in the hopper.

In March 2020, Nacha plans to make more changes by increasing the per-transaction dollar limit for same-day ACH transactions to $100,000 from $25,000. Nacha estimated that the change will make 97% of all ACH business-to-business payments eligible for same-day ACH, up from 91% that are currently eligible.

Also, this summer it plans to roll out an ACH contact registry for financial institutions and begin tightening rules that require certain users to render deposit account information unreadable when stored electronically. And in March 2021, Nacha plans to implement a third, daily same-day ACH processing window.