The ACH Network moved 7.5 billion payments totaling nearly $20 trillion value during the second quarter, according to an announcement from Nacha, the industry group responsible for running the protocol.
Year-over-year change metrics included:
Last quarter was the first in which the same-day ACH dollar limit was $1 million per payment, following the increase on March 18, 2022.
See also: Nacha Raises Per Payment Limit for Same Day ACH to $1M
Moving large sums on a same-day basis is a boon for B2B.
“ACH end users have consistently and constantly asked for higher dollar limits for Same Day ACH payments,” Michael Herd, Nacha’s SVP of ACH Network Administration, said in a March blog post following the announcement that the cap was being raised.
The limit was a mere $25,000 until 2020, when it quadrupled to $100,000 on the way to the current $1 million-per-payment level.
Speed at Scale Matters for B2B
Even without the pandemic’s added impetus, ACH has some obvious benefits over paper checks. While checks can take time to arrive or even get lost in the mail, electronic payments are prompt and dependable. They require little or no labor to enter a recordkeeping system, as banks create an electronic record with every transaction.
B2B use cases are experiencing a boom, as economic pressures make waiting for a check in the mail increasingly untenable. As businesses realize the simplicity and cost savings they can achieve through ACH, use is likely to continue to grow, especially considering the increased transaction speed and size.
The system now has the speed and capacity businesses need to process large payments efficiently and effectively, with just-in-time certainty of fund availability.
The increased transaction size has the potential to substantially increase network utility to large businesses which need to pay for large orders. Thus, ACH will become more valuable in addressing the payment piece of the supply chain crisis.
Sixty-eight percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) report increased use of ACH at their firms due to digitization since the pandemic’s onset, making ACH the No. 1 payment method in terms of being used more frequently, according to the “Real-Time Payments Tracker,” a PYMNTS and The Clearing House collaboration.
Winners and Losers
The beneficiaries of this increase include suppliers and purchasers, who can benefit from the efficiency, effectiveness and clarity of date-certain, same-day payments at high six- and seven-figure scales, as well as banks who earn transaction fees and an enhanced customer relationship with business-to-business clients.
Potential losers include credit card companies, the U.S. Postal Service and its private sector competitors such as UPS and FedEx, which profit from paper check delivery, as well as beleaguered business check printers.
Even as cutting-edge innovations like real-time payments and cryptocurrencies become mainstream, ACH seems to be priming itself for a competitive future based on the network enhancements it’s making.
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