The Rise of ACH Payments During COVID

ACH (automated clearinghouse) transactions have been on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses began moving to electronic payment adoption.

Recent reports show the volume of these networks grew by 6.1% in the fourth quarter of 2021, helped along by healthcare claim payouts and B2B payments in particular.

The 7.5 billion ACH payments made during this quarter marked an increase of 426 million versus the same quarter the previous year. Meanwhile, same-day ACH volume grew by more than 75% in Q4 2021, with two areas in particular showing robust growth in ACH volume: medical and dental payments, up 13%, and B2B ACH payments increasing by 17%.

These findings indicate that businesses are increasingly beginning to grasp the value of electronic payments and see ACH networks as reliable and efficient ways to obtain them.

Meanwhile, traditional payment methods like checks still play a key role in the B2B payments space, although new findings suggest this has begun to change in recent years, particularly during the pandemic.

A recent survey shows that financial professionals are processing substantially fewer checks than they were seven years ago, while the number of ACH transactions during that seven-year period has doubled.

This trend could be fueled by the considerably lower cost of ACH transfers compared to checks: the median cost of sending or receiving checks ranges from $1 to $4 apiece, while ACH transactions cost fifty cents.

The report also points to other factors that suggest ACH transactions are reaching a similar level of dominance compared to check-based payments in the B2B world. For example, the study found that 92% of businesses are accepting paper checks when receiving funds, while 86% use them to make payments.

However, ACH transfers enjoyed robust usage as well, with 87% of companies employing ACH credit to receive payments and 78% using ACH debit to make them.

For more on the rise of ACH, download the Real-Time Payments Tracker, a joint effort by PYMNTS and The Clearing House.