Posted by Sarah Jordan

Despite the doom and gloom in the economy lately, a recent press release from NACHA states that ACH payments actually experienced growth in the 4th quarter, with an amazing 4.5% increase in Q4 2008 over Q4 2007. That means that more than 3.8 billion ACH transactions were processed last quarter. The growth shows that more and more people and businesses are using ACH as a payment method, which is a promising sign that businesses (especially small businesses) are moving toward utilizing new cost-cutting, green technologies.

The overall 4.5% increase was spurred from some remarkable double-digit growth in specific segments of ACH processing. One segment was Internet ACH payments (known as WEB entries), which had a 16.5% increase, reaching 552 million transactions, and accounting for $220 billion. Another segment with double-digit growth was business-to-business ACH payments (known as CCD entries), which had a 15% growth, with 14.4 million transactions, and accounting for $691 billion. One of the most impressive areas of growth, though, came from back-office conversion (known as BOC entries) which grew to more than 39 million payments, up from 3 million payments in 2007.

Growth is the buzz word in the ACH payments industry and we should expect that word to stick around. NACHA President and CEO states that, “opportunities exist for great adoption of all native ACH payment types as the safe, secure, and green attributes of ACH are embraced by businesses and consumers.”

The most exciting part about this growth (other than the fact that something grew last quarter) is that business owners are consistently moving toward making their lives easier! Internet payments, check conversion, and B2B direct payments all cut costs for businesses and free business owners from the paper rut of legacy invoicing and collection processes.

Read the full article from NACHA
Learn more about ACH payments

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