Another Banner Quarter for ACH Transactions – Digital Transactions

Same-day automated clearing house transactions continue to surge, reaching $1.3 trillion in value in the second quarter, says Nacha. That’s up from $980 billion in value in the year-ago quarter.

That value came on 435.7 million transactions, a 29.3% increase from 337 million same-day ACH transactions in the 2025 second quarter, says Nacha, the ACH governing body.

Same-day ACH, which had its start in 2016, is available for all ACH transaction types except international. Some same-day ACH use cases include urgent bill pay, refunds, tax payments, account-to-account transfers, and cash concentration movement.

“The breadth of use cases has not fundamentally changed, but the continued growth indicates that businesses, financial institutions, and consumers are increasingly taking advantage of the ACH Network’s same-day settlement capability,” a Nacha spokesperson says.

One factor that aids usage of same-day ACH is that banks and credit unions are required under Nacha rules to receive same-day payments when participating in the ACH network, the spokesperson says. Also, no separate payment rail or new integration is needed to originate same-day ACH payments. Organizations that already use ACH can easily use the same rails for same-day ACH transactions, Nacha says.

“Although Nacha does not have a way to know which financial institutions are originating [same-day ACH] payments, the continued growth of [same-day ACH] demonstrates its popularity,” the spokesperson says.

Stepping back and looking at overall ACH activity in the quarter shows that the total second-quarter 2026 volume of 9.3 billion transactions included 5.1 billion debits and 4.2 billion credits.

Internet ACH transactions, which are electronic money transfers using ACH, came to 3 billion in the quarter, up 7.6% from the year prior. Direct-deposit activity of 2.3 billion was up 3.6%, followed by business-to-business volume of 2.2 billion, a 9.9% increase. Health-care volume of 141.4 million was up 2.3% and peer-to-peer volume of 136.6 million increased 21%.

“The growth in P2P volume is consistent with the continued consumer adoption of digital payments and P2P services offered through financial institutions and other providers. Consumers increasingly expect convenient ways to digitally move money between accounts and between people,” the Nacha spokesperson says.