My colleague Bryan Derman and I are in Orlando for NACHA’s Payments 2009 conference. Just heading off to bed, but thought I’d do a quick post to share some B2B stats that were just released:
Business-to-Business (B2B) Payments/Financial EDI
More than 1 billion EDI-formatted addenda records were transmitted across the ACH Network in 2008, a 14.6 percent increase over 2007. Businesses use EDI-formatted addenda records to send and receive invoice- and other payment-related information. The volume of CTX payments, which can carry up to 9,999 addenda records, increased by 16.1 percent, and the number of CCD payments carrying an addenda record increased by 17.9 percent.
[The press release isn’t up on the NACHA site yet; I’ll add a link tomorrow. Other good stats on WEB and over all NACHA network growth, too.]
At Glenbrook we’ve long bemoaned the relatively low number of business payment ACH transactions that carry remittance, or addenda, data through the network to indicate what the payment is for. Businesses rely on this information to post incoming payments against thier accounts receivable. Often times businesses receive payments via ACH but the explantory data is sent via email or fax. Any increase in the number of ACH records with remittance is a sign that more business will be able to automatically post the payments to their customer’s open accounts. These new stats indicate progress! Granted, it’s an increase from a low base, but double-digit increases are a lot ot be excited about in the slow moving world of B2B payments.
More tomorrow! I’ll be covering the conference real time via Twitter @erinmccune #pay09 and both Bryan and I will be posting our observations here on Payments Views.
Good night.
