Dive Brief:

• The ACH Network, the largest U.S. automated payments channel, logged 7.5 billion transactions in Q2 2022, representing a 3.5% increase and the transfer of $19.6 trillion, Nacha said Tuesday in a press release.
• The ACH network processed 185 million same-day payments in Q2 2022, jumping 24% from Q2 2021. The value of those payments nearly doubled to $486 billion, from $250 billion, according to the release.
• The business-to-business ACH transactions volume climbed 12.3% to 1.5 billion payments in Q2 2022, from 1.3 billion in Q2 2021.

Dive Insight:

Nacha, which oversees the ACH Network, noted that this quarter was the first when transactions up to $1 million were allowed, following a March 18 start date for acceptance of those larger payments. The organization increased the cap from $100,000 to $1 million to meet the demand of businesses and financial services firms seeking to transact electronically.

“The results show the benefits of Same Day to users of the ACH Network,” Jane Larimer, Nacha President and CEO, said in the release. “Nacha recently reported on how the University of Kentucky switched from checks to Same Day ACH to solve payroll issues during the pandemic. This is one of many use cases for Same Day ACH.”

Of the 7.5 billion payments transacted via the ACH Network in Q2 2022, 4.3 billion were debit transactions, and 3.2 billion were credit transactions, according to Nacha, formerly known as the National Automated Clearing House Association.

Nacha’s Q2 results indicate that healthcare remains a key driver in payment volumes. In Q2 2022, healthcare payments increased 5.3% to 113.7 million, the Nacha release said. A year ago, Nacha found that healthcare payments jumped by 35.7% to 108 million payments, a record for the category.

Among the other transaction types that experienced growth in the second quarter were internet and peer-to-peer payments. While internet payments rose 8.2% to 2.3 billion, P2P transactions had a 24.2% bump to 80.6 million, according to Nacha. Meanwhile, the volume in direct deposits dipped by 3.9% to 2 billion.

Other research suggests that consumers are increasing their peer-to-peer payments beyond the ACH Network. According to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank released in May, the proportion of consumers using mobile apps for peer-to-peer payments rose to 29% in 2021 from 15% in 2020.