Nacha

The numbers tell the story: The ACH Network is a bright spot amid the economic uncertainty of 2022.

Following the increase of the Same Day ACH dollar limit to $1 million in March 2022, Nacha and the ACH Operators - the Federal Reserve and The Clearing House - have completed the latest phase in the acceleration of ACH payments with the implementation of “Late Night ACH.”

Steady growth continued for the ACH Network in the third quarter of 2022, with 7.6 billion payments processed valued at $19.2 trillion. Those are increases of 4.2% and 6%, respectively, from a year earlier.

A new survey from the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) shows B2B payments are rapidly moving away from checks in favor of ACH and other electronic payments.

Today, Nacha, the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC) and our nation’s Payments Associations announced a first-of-its-kind alliance to create the Accredited Faster Payments Professional (AFPP) program. This partnership demonstrates a cross-industry collaboration to benefit the entire payments community.

It isn’t every day that you see an increase of 1,140%. But when you look at some recent gains by Same Day ACH used for business-to-business (B2B) payments that’s exactly what happened. 

Increasing the Same Day ACH dollar limit to $1 million per payment posed no greater fraud risk than the prior $100,000 threshold, a new survey by Nacha’s Risk Management Advisory Group (RMAG) found. 

The ACH Network moved 7.5 billion payments in the second quarter of 2022, led by growth in Same Day ACH and business-to-business (B2B) payments.

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.

Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer takes a closer look at the first quarter 2022 ACH Network results.

The ACH Network experienced overall growth in the first quarter of 2022, even as recent forms of pandemic-related government assistance have ended.

Presidents typically stand before Congress and proclaim the state of the union to be strong. Michael Herd was looking for a different adjective to describe the ACH State of the Union and came up with the perfect fit: “historic.”