The Federal Reserve has released detailed estimates of ACH, check and wire payments made by consumers and businesses in the United States in 2021. The data is available on the Federal Reserve Payments Study website (FRPS) (Off-site). The FRPS is an ongoing effort to estimate aggregate trends in noncash payments in the U.S., offering a periodic benchmark of developments in the payments system to policymakers, the industry and the public.
Highlights include:
- In 2021, business payers made the most commercial ACH credit transfers: 85% by number and 97% by value. These transfers grew more rapidly in both number and value from 2018 to 2021 than in the previous three-year period.
- Consumer ACH debit transfers, paid by a consumer and initiated by the payee’s depository institution, grew by double digits annually from 2018 to 2021.
- Same-day ACH transfers continued to make up a relatively small percentage of all commercial ACH transfers in 2021. Starting from a small base, growth in same-day ACH transfers from 2018 to 2021 was considerably higher than for commercial ACH transfers in the same time period.
- Consumer checks declined faster in number than business checks from 2018 to 2021.
- Most U.S.-originated wire transfers continued to be sent to domestic payees — 62% of wires by number in 2021.
- In 2021, three-quarters of person-to-person (P2P) transfers initiated via depository institutions’ websites or apps were made available to recipients in 30 minutes or less.
Data included in this release is from the Depository and Financial Institutions Payments Survey (DFIPS), which includes a consistent set of large depository institutions and a representative sample of smaller institutions. See the FRPS website (Off-site) for additional information about the study and to download data.
