Same-day payments lead ACH growth

The ACH network continues to chart solid growth, driven in large part by same-day payments, Nacha reported. Overall, 8.7 billion payments valued at $23.3 trillion moved across the ACH network in the quarter ending on June 30, 2025. That's a 5 percent increase in transactions and a 7.9 percent increase in value over the same quarter last year.

There were 336.4 million same-day payments valued at $980.3 billion, representing 15 percent and 22 percent year-over-year growth respectively. In the first half of 2025, same-day ACH payments totaled 662.4 million valued at nearly $1.9 trillion.

One of the biggest jumps was seen in business-to-business payments, with more than 2 billion payments, a 20.6 percent increase over the same period in 2024.

Claim payments to healthcare providers also charted impressive gains at 9.9 percent to total 138.2 million payments.

"The continued robust growth of same day ACH shows how it is serving payments use cases for consumers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations," said Jane Larimer, NACHA president and CEO. "As we enter the second half of the year, we expect to see this trend continue."

'Explosion' of faster payments

The ACH data follow similar impressive growth data reported last week by RTP and FedNow, the two real-time payment networks.

RTP, the nation's only private sector real-time payment network, averaged 1.18 million payments a day during the second quarter of 2025, processing a total of $481 billion. FedNow, the real-time payments network operated by the Federal Reserve, moved more than 2.1 million payments in the second quarter, up from 1.3 million in the first quarter of 2025.

In a Q&A provided by the Fed, Chief FedNow Executive Nick Stanescu, pointed to an "explosion of instant payment innovation emerging among financial institutions, payment processors and fintechs."

While real-time payments offer a faster option to the ACH, champions of the ACH still see solid growth options for the network.

Joe Hussey, Nacha board chair and managing director of global payments and liquidity at Wells Fargo & Co., said during a recent Nacha podcast that "the future is solid" for the ACH. Hussey, a four-decade veteran of the banking industry, expressed surprise with the consistent double-digit growth in same-day ACH, with volume exceeding 1 million payments for the first time in 2024.

"I'm sure I wouldn't have predicted that we were going to have the growth we've had in the last couple of years on same-day ACH," Hussey said. Asked what he expects in coming years, he responded "The consumer is going to continue to want speed."

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