Posted by NationalACH on Sep 29, 2009

Online bill payments with electronic checks are fast becoming the preferred method of paying bills for millions of Americans. Within a year, web-based payments will account for more payments than paper checks.

According to NACHA, accounts receivables conversions (ARC), which is the code used to track paper checks sent to lockboxes for bill payments, registered 595 million transactions in the second quarter of 2009. This represents a decrease of 6.8% from 638.6 million transactions in the first quarter of 2009. It is a decline of 11.2% from 669.8 million transactions in 2008’s second quarter. WEB based ACH bill payments, increased up by 10.5%. WEB payments are now 94% of ARC payments and expected to continue to rise and surpass paper checks within the next few quarters.

The ACH network posted total volume of 3.83 billion transactions in the second quarter of 2009, up 2.5% from 3.74 billion in the prior-year quarter and 1.5% from 3.78 billion in the first quarter.

The of paper checks being written will continue to decrease. Many members of the younger generations have never written a paper check. Even though the demise of paper checks has been slow in coming, it will inevitably happen.

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