Dive Brief:
-Electronic payments operator Nacha logged a 5.2% third-quarter increase in payments flowing over its ACH automated network, compared to the year-ago period, thanks partly to increased transactions for the internet and healthcare industries. Transactions climbed to 8.8 billion while the dollar value jumped 8.2% to $23.2 trillion, Nacha said in a press release Thursday.
-Payments system operator The Clearing House said it charted a single-day record for its real-time payments system, known as the RTP Network, on Oct. 3.That day, it processed 1.8 million transactions valued at $5.2 billion, according to a Thursday press release from the company.
-Meanwhile, the rival U.S. government instant payments system FedNow, operated by the Federal Reserve, said earlier this month that it has now attracted 1,500 banks and credit unions to its instant payments system, which was launched in July 2023.
Dive Insights:
The U.S. payments system operators have promoted an ever-expanding transactions over their electronic networks, as the U.S. tries to move away from a reliance on paper checks and to catch up with other countries shifting to digital payments at a faster pace.
Nacha touted the third-quarter uptake of ACH for business-to-business transactions, saying that component rose 10% over, which was generally in line with past increases. That B2B volume equated to about 2.1 billion payments, or $16 trillion, which was up 8.8%, according to the release. That B2B traffic was a significant amount of overall ACH volume, accounting for 69% of the total value for the third quarter.
While ACH payments for internet transactions rose 6.1% to 2.9 billion, healthcare payments rose 6.8% to 141 million and peer-to-peer payments jumped 22.7% to 122.2 million, the release said.
The Clearing House’s RTP Network and FedNow have been racing to move financial institutions to use their speedier payments systems, but persuading U.S. financial institutions and businesses to leave behind more traditional channels hasn’t been easy.
FedNow’s effort to lure financial institutions to its newer fast-paced system has been slow-going. It introduced the system to appeal specifically to smaller institutions that appeared reluctant to join the RTP Network operated by their larger bank peers that own The Clearing House. In any case, the RTP, which began processing payments in 2017, has had the first mover’s advantage over FedNow.
“Reaching a single-day record of nearly two million transactions highlights both the scalability of the network and the growing confidence of the financial industry in instant payments as the new standard,” The Clearing House Senior Vice President Jim Colassano said in the release.
