Research and Markets: ACH Challenges Cards in New Markets; Businesses Conducted 1.7 Billion ACH Transactions in 2003, Disbursing Roughly $19.7 Trillion -- 71.7% of All ACH Dollars.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com) has announced the addition of ACH Challenges Cards in New Markets to their offering.

The ACH is entrenched in large corporations. Businesses conducted 1.7 billion ACH transactions in 2003, disbursing roughly $19.7 trillion -- 71.7% of all ACH dollars. These business transactions were for payments among trading partners, payroll, intra-company cash management transfers, government vendor payments, and business-to-government tax withholdings. Card companies, to execute against their strategic growth plans that target corporate accounts, must determine how they will displace ACH. At the same time, ACH has achieved its highest growth rates from inroads into consumer payments, a market where cards are entrenched. The ACH eCheck initiatives, as a group, grew 27.3% in a single quarter (vs. Q4 2003) and by 132.1% annually (Q1 2003 vs. Q1 2004) -- albeit not without significant growth pains.

The ACH growth into non-recurring, low-value, consumer payment markets has worried consumer advocates, and even the Fed because of a potential for fraud and a lack of consumer account protection. These concerns are not likely to slow ACH growth in these markets, however, because growth is driven by merchant adoption -- when high volume, high value transactions are involved, merchants can save significantly by switching consumers to ACH.

The report "ACH Challenges Cards in New Markets" looks at ACH strengths and weaknesses and identifies the impact of these on the participants that include consumers merchants, 3rd party processors, originating depository financial institutions (ODFI), receiving depository financial institution (RDFI), and service providers that offer solutions that mitigate ACH risk.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c4770