What’s Driving the Rapid Growth in ACH Payments

The ACH Network is reliable and ubiquitous. And over the past year, it continued to realize strong growth, both in the volume of payments and overall dollar amount. In 2025, ACH Network payment volume increased by roughly 1.6 billion, reaching a total of 35.2 billion, or an average of 141 million payments per day. In the same period, $93 trillion moved across ACH rails, up nearly $7 trillion from the prior year. While transaction volume grew by 4.9%, the total value of those payments increased by 7.9%.

This growth reflects the continued expansion of ACH use cases across the payments space. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Michael Herd, Executive Vice President of ACH Network Administration at Nacha, and Ben Danner, Senior Analyst, Credit and Commercial at Javelin Strategy & Research, analyzed the drivers behind this increase and explained why ACH is positioned to grow even further.

Embedded in the Economy

A highly efficient method for moving large volumes of payments, ACH continues to see growing adoption—including B2B payments, consumer bill payments, and account transfers. It remains a cost-effective option for high-volume payments between known counterparties.

ACH is directly embedded across a wide range of platforms, software providers, and business workflows, including invoicing and payroll. Businesses from Stripe to QuickBooks to ADP all offer ACH as a readily available payment option.

Because ACH is so deeply integrated across the economy, it tends to grow in lockstep with overall economic activity. How the ACH Network scales to support that growth has been an important factor in its recent expansion.

Moving on From Checks

Despite the government’s high-profile decision to move away from paper checks last year, federal ACH volume increased by just 1%. The commercial sector has been the primary driver of overall growth.

In the B2B segment, ACH volume exceeded 8 billion transactions in 2025, representing $63 trillion in value, and continues to grow at roughly 10% annually. This dovetails with findings from the Association for Financial Professionals, which reported last year that checks now account for just 25% of B2B payment volume.

“That calls out a success at the industry level in moving businesses from checks to ACH,” said Herd. “It also shows that there’s room left to continue that transition for the 25% of B2B payments left that are checks, and that could still move to ACH and other payment rails.”

Danner added: “Replacing paper checks has been an important development. The paper check is clunky, less efficient, prone to fraud, and you have to mail it. Why not use something like ACH? It’s safer, it’s automated, it’s cheaper, it’s easier to reconcile, improves cash flow, liquidity, and reduces manual processing.”

Another fast-growing B2B use case is healthcare claim payments, which flow from insurers and other payers. Last year, ACH processed 548 million healthcare payments, moving nearly $3 trillion directly to medical providers, hospitals, and pharmacies.

Consumer Growth in Same-Day ACH

As impressive as the growth of the overall ACH Network is, Same Day ACH has been expanding at an even faster pace. In 2025, Same Day ACH transactions grew nearly 17%, exceeding 1.4 billion payments. It’s increasingly becoming a routine part of consumers’ financial lives.

“We’re seeing Same Day ACH being deployed in consumer payments pretty broadly,” said Herd. “The use cases include account-to-account transfers between financial institutions, digital wallet loads where funds are being debited from a bank account, and credit card bill payments where the issuer has reasons to collect funds as quickly as possible.”

Online consumer ACH payment volume rose by about 650 million payments to reach 11.4 billion, representing 6% year-over-year growth. These payments cover a wide range of consumer bills—including mortgages, car loans, insurance premiums, utilities, student loans, and credit card bills. Essentially, any recurring payment that resembles a bill is a natural fit for online ACH.

Popular alternative payment methods, such as digital wallets, often rely on ACH either to move money to or from a user’s bank account or to settle transactions behind the scenes. Many credit card bills are paid via ACH, as are numerous settlement payments to merchants. The continued shift away from paper checks is also driving this trend.

Pay-by-Bank via ACH

The continued shift toward faster electronic payments has paved the way for Open Banking, also known as Pay by Bank. This approach lets consumers pay directly from their bank accounts, streamlining transactions and reducing friction. Younger generations, in particular, expect mobile-first, fully digital experiences, making Open Banking a natural extension of the ACH Network. Linking to a bank account through an Open Banking session to initiate an ACH payment fits seamlessly into this environment. Even major players like Walmart now offer Pay by Bank through their apps.

“I often talk about people in their 20s who have never had a checkbook, have never written a check, wouldn’t know how to locate routing and account information in order to pay a bill, or even sign up for payroll Direct Deposit,” said Herd. “They largely do that through their phones by Open Banking and linking their bank accounts.”

“It’s not surprising that these areas are growing, especially as consumers continue to embrace digital payment methods,” said Danner. “We’re in the early stages of adoption of true Open Banking in the U.S., and there’s still tremendous potential for ongoing and expanded adoption of that and its ability to enable ACH payments.”

“Younger generations of consumers and employees are enrolling in ACH payments for transfers and payroll Direct Deposit,” he said. “And there’s still a lot of potential there for it to become even more mainstream.”

New Rules for the New Year

Even with the rise of Open Banking and faster, more frequent ACH payments, Nacha also remains focused on safety and soundness. New Nacha Rules are set to go into effect to enhance the system’s value and security. In 2026, ACH participants will begin implementing upgraded transaction monitoring rules, with additional improvements—including for international transactions—also on the way.

These changes aim to support the growing volume and speed of payments while maintaining reliability for both consumers and businesses.

“Over the long run, we have better risk management across the entirety of the ACH system,” said Herd. “That creates an environment that is receptive to and encourages additional adoption and growth.”

“An example we’ve experienced in the past is account validation, which is a rule we added in 2018,” he said. “It created a whole new industry of account validation services that enabled better ACH risk management quality and therefore better adoption. That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for to contribute to even further growth in the future.”

Taken together, these trends show the ACH Network’s continued growth is the outcome of thoughtful integration, ongoing adoption, and continuous modernization. It continues to be well positioned for businesses and consumers who are moving away from paper checks and towards faster, safe electronic payments.

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Tags: ACHB2BCommercial PaymentsNACHAPaper ChecksPay-by-BankSame-day ACH