Competition from faster payments pushed the automated clearing house to introduce same-day processing, but now the ACH may well turn the tables, says Sarah Grotta.
It has been a year since same-day ACH (SDA) credits and debits have been available in the United States. Here’s a quick refresher of SDA volumes reported thus far by NACHA, the governing body for the automated clearing house:
– 56.8 million credit transaction and $72.5 billion dollars processed in 2017;
– 18 million debit transactions and $14.5 billion dollars processed in 2017;
– 75.1 million total transactions and over $87 billion in dollar volume in 2017;
– 41 million transactions through the second quarter of 2018, representing over 200% growth compared to the prior-year period;
– Primary SDA use cases include consumer bill pay, payroll, and business-to-business payments.
That’s not a bad start for a 1-year-old. In its favor, SDA has a built-in network, developed over decades through integration with over 12,000 U.S. financial institutions, that reaches nearly every U.S. transaction account. Hundreds of thousands of businesses can send SDA, and received SDA transactions can be fully processed, reconciled, and recognized by their account systems. This is the kind of ubiquity that newer faster and real-time payment options can only dream of.