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The climb in same-day automated clearing house volume continues as 403 million of these payments were made in 2026’s first quarter, a 23.6% increase from the same quarter a year ago.
Started in 2016 for credit payments only, same-day ACH volume has steadily grown, especially with the 2017 addition of same-day ACH debit payments. Total same-day ACH volume has ballooned from 13 million in 2016 to 1.4 billion in 2025. Same-day ACH debit payments comprised 56.6% of the total 2025 volume and credit 43.4%.
Nacha says the value of first-quarter 2026 same-day ACH was $1.1 trillion, a 22.1% increase from $897 billion a year prior.
Growth was common across major transaction types, such as business-to-business, health care, Internet, direct deposit, and peer-to-peer.
Nacha says business-to-business ACH payments, with volume reaching 2.1 billion transactions in the first quarter, were up 9.4% from 1.9 billion a year ago.
P2P ACH payments totaled 129.3 million in the quarter, up 18.5%, followed by Internet payments at 2.9 billion, up 5.4%. That was followed by health care at 131.1 million, up 4.9%, and direct deposit, at 2.2 billion transactions, up 1.7%.
Overall, first-quarter ACH volume of 8.9 billion payments increased 4.8% from a year ago and the value of these transactions was $24.1 trillion, up 9.3%.
The results show that ACH payments are eating into check use, and same-day ACH is meeting user demand for faster payments, Jane Larimer, Nacha president and chief executive, says in a statement.
