NACHA Issues First Top 50 List of ACH Receivers

Also for the first time, two credit unions have qualified for a NACHA-compiled list. Bank of America Corporation of Charlotte, North Carolina topped the list with received ACH volume in 2002 of over 507 million payments. Navy Federal Credit Union of Merrifield, Virginia and State Employees Credit Union of Raleigh, North Carolina qualified for the list at numbers 18 and 41, respectively, with received ACH volume of 43 million and 14.7 million, respectively. A significant finding of the NACHA survey is that the receipt of ACH payments is much less concentrated than origination. The top 5 institutions accounted for 22 percent of ACH volume, compared to 49 percent on the origination side. Combined, the 50 largest receiving institutions accounted for 47 percent of ACH volume, compared to 91 percent on the origination side. Since 83 percent of ACH payments are to or from consumers, a financial institutions received volume can be an indicator of the use of Direct Deposit and Direct Payment by its customers. In addition, since NACHA estimates that each ACH credit saves a receiving financial institution at least $1.00 by not having to accept a check deposit, the number of ACH credits an institution receives is an indicator of how valuable the ACH Network is to the institution. In its survey, NACHA counted all ACH-formatted transactions received by a financial institution from an ACH Operator - an electronic clearing house among banks. ACH-formatted transactions remaining within a single institution - known as on-us payments - were excluded from the survey. The complete NACHA Top 50 Receivers list is available on NACHAs web site at (www.nacha.org). ACH payments include Direct Deposit of payroll and dividends, Direct Payment of mortgages, loans, insurance, utility and other bills, automated savings or investment contributions, business-to-business payments, and, increasingly, e-checks and e-commerce payments. In 2002 there were almost 9 billion ACH payments worth $24.4 trillion.