The Quiet Payment Method Outpacing Checks in B2B

Emily Jones · 2026-09-22

You hear about new payment methods popping up constantly—instant this, blockchain that. But if you look at what's actually happening in business-to-business payments, there's one system that's been steadily winning for a decade now. It's not flashy. It's not new. It's ACH. And the numbers don't lie. According to the Cleveland Fed, B2B payments made via ACH more than doubled from 3.6 billion in 2015 to a whopping 8.7 billion in 2024. Think about that scale for a second. Since 2020, ACH has officially been the most-used method for businesses paying other businesses. Meanwhile, other common options like wire transfers, credit cards, and debit cards have stayed pretty flat. The real story here is about checks. Almost all of ACH's explosive growth has come directly from the decline of paper checks. ### The Check Is No Longer in the Lead Back in 2015, checks were king. They handled 4.6 billion B2B payments. Fast forward to 2024, and that number had plummeted to 2.7 billion. Their share of the total B2B payment pie shrank from 32% down to just 13%. Here's the fascinating part, though—even with that steep drop, nearly 90% of businesses still used a check for something in 2025. Old habits die hard. So why the slow but undeniable shift? Ben Danner, a Senior Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, puts it simply: "The slow move towards ACH away from checks is about cost, automation, and reducing risk." He points out the obvious dangers with paper—mishandling, counterfeits, alterations. When you tally up all the hidden costs of processing a check, ACH just makes more sense. Plus, it offers speed with same-day options. ### The Simple Math of Cost Savings Let's talk dollars and cents, because that's what ultimately drives these decisions for most companies. The median fee for an ACH payment is between 25 and 50 cents. For a paper check? It's about $1 for the sender and just under a dollar for the receiver. That might not seem like much per transaction, but multiply it by thousands of payments a year, and the savings become impossible to ignore. - **ACH Fee:** $0.25 - $0.50 - **Check Fee (Sending):** ~$1.00 - **Check Fee (Receiving):** ~$1.00 The math speaks for itself. ### Where Different Payment Methods Fit It's also interesting to see what each payment type is typically used for. ACH and checks dominate the middle ground. In 2024, the average ACH transaction was $8,084, while the average check was $5,577. They're your go-to for routine, mid-sized invoices. On the extremes, wire transfers are reserved for the big deals, averaging nearly $3.2 million per transaction. On the smaller end, credit cards averaged $275 and debit cards just $119. They're perfect for one-off purchases or smaller expenses. The overall landscape has shifted dramatically in one area, while others held steady. Credit cards and wires held their ground, accounting for about 30% and 2% of payments respectively over the decade. Debit cards saw a bit of a bump, moving from 13% to 17%. The trend is clear. Businesses are following the same digital path consumers started on years ago. They're choosing efficiency, security, and lower costs. ACH might not be the most exciting topic, but its quiet takeover of the B2B payment world is one of the most significant financial shifts happening right under our noses.