ACH end users have consistently and constantly asked for higher dollar limits for Same Day ACH payments. In March 2020, the original limit of $25,000 was raised to $100,000. Then, two years later in March 2022, the limit was increased again to $1 million per payment. Let’s look at the impact this most recent change has made.

The total amount of dollars flowing through Same Day ACH in March 2022 was $115 billion. This is an increase of 42% versus the prior month of February 2022, in which $81 billion moved through Same Day ACH. Note that the new dollar limit was live for just 10 processing days in March (out of 23). What would happen for a full month? Nacha now has that data.

For April 2022, Same Day ACH moved $177 billion, an increase of another 54% versus March, and more than doubling February’s dollar volume. With these increases, the average dollar amount of a Same Day ACH payment now looks much more similar to a standard ACH payment—an average of $2,827 for Same Day ACH payments in April, and $2,679 for standard ACH.

And what about payment volume? Same Day ACH payment volume in April 2022 reached a new monthly high of nearly 63 million, which means that about 3 million Same Day ACH payments are being made every day.

Many organizations in the ACH system—Operators, banks and credit unions, processors, Payment Associations, and more—have worked hard to make Same Day ACH a reality. Which is why seeing figures like these, and realizing how vital Same Day ACH has become, is gratifying to us at Nacha.