B2B Payments Brings Major Growth To ACH Volume

The volume of Automatic Clearing House payments spiked to nearly 23 billion electronic payments in 2014, and B2B payments played a major role in that growth, according to new data released Thursday (April 16).

NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association released the figures of its latest survey of ACH, revealing that more than $40 trillion worth of funds were transferred over the ACH Network. That number represents a 3 percent increase from 2013, reports said.

Business-to-business transactions were one of several groups that experienced significant growth in volume of ACH payments, as were recurring payment and Web transactions. According to NACHA, the ACH Network saw 2.7 billion B2B payment transactions. Among those payments, 149 million originated from the health care industry. Overall, the rise in B2B payments over the ACH Network increased by 7.3 percent compared with the year prior.

The ACH Network’s expansion of new payment processing capabilities has contributed at least partially to the increase in B2B transactions. “The ACH Network has continually added capabilities over its history to enable a host of electronic payments, such as payroll, bill payments, business payments, online and mobile payments, international payments and a variety of others,” said NACHA president and CEO Janet O. Estep.

These statistics could hint at businesses overcoming their concerns of transferring over to the ACH Network since it launched in 1972. According to AvidXchange VP of Payment Services Rhonda Rogers, businesses are beginning to realize that digital payments provides the same level and quality of data as they would have with paper checks sitting right in front of them.

“I think [companies] are finally starting to understand that remittance detail will be transmitted,” Rogers said in a recent interview with PYMNTS. She added that the benefits of security and a reduction in the number of outstanding payments or checks are just two reasons why ACH seems to finally be catching up after several decades.