Same Day ACH transactions rising with new limit – but fraud risk remains low

More and more employers are getting on board with using Nacha’s Same Day ACH ever since the agency increased the dollar limit to $1 million in March 2022.

During Q2 of 2022, the ACH network processed a whopping 7.5 billion payments – 4.3 billion debits and 3.2 billion credits – largely spurred by growth in both Same Day ACH and B2B transactions. That’s according to the latest data from Nacha.

Same Day ACH transactions accounted for 185 million of those payments totaling $486 billion in Q2, an increase of over 24% in volume and over 94% in value compared to the second quarter of 2021.

There were 1.5 billion B2B payments over the ACH network during the second quarter of the year, representing a 12.3% increase over Q2 of 2021.

As companies continue remote operations during the pandemic, ACH payments have been used heavily by A/P teams to pay vendors – and Payroll pros to pay employees.

Overall, 7.5 billion payments worth $19.6 trillion were made via the ACH network in Q2 2022. Over 250 million additional payments were processed via ACH this quarter compared to last year – and that’s without federal stimulus payments inflating those figures.

Fraud & Same Day ACH

With the increased dollar limit for Same Day ACH, you may wonder if that also comes with a greater risk of fraud. Criminals could jump at the chance to figure out ways to defraud employers out of higher amounts of money by initiating unauthorized same-day transactions.

So far, this hasn’t been the case, Nacha said.

The agency’s Risk Management Advisory Group surveyed various financial institutions shortly after the new Same Day ACH limit went into effect. The survey specifically asked if they’ve seen any increases in Same Day ACH fraud that were directly attributable to the enhancement (in this case, the higher dollar limit) that’s just been implemented.

Those who answer yes were asked an additional question to clarify if the increase was measurable or if it was anecdotal.  

No institutions answered yes to these questions about the new limit, per Nacha.

That’s comforting, since over 80% of receiving depository financial institutions (RDFIs) surveyed are regularly processing Same Day ACH transactions greater than the old limit of $100,000, and 90% of originating depository financial institutions (ODFIs) are seeing clients consistently initiate Same Day ACH transactions larger than the previous limit.

So transmitting and receiving larger Same Day ACH payments doesn’t necessarily make a company or its bank immediate targets of fraud schemes. That means Same Day ACH is a cost-effective option worth exploring for any payments you might still be making by paper check (e.g., termination payments).