Merchant Bank Account Check Payment Data

On the whole, the number of non-cash payments in the United States rose by 4.6 percent, on average, per year between 2006 and 200, approximately the same rate as the previous 3-year period (4.5 percent). In comparison, gross domestic product and personal expenditures rose by 1.8 and 0.3 percent, respectively, each year for the period. The value of non-cash payments declined by 1.6 percent per year over the same period, possibly reflecting the economic recession.

Merchant Bank Account Check Payment Data

The number of checks cashed in 2009 is calculated to have been 24.5 billion, totaling $31.6 trillion in value. That was a decline of 7.1 percent per year, on average, between 2006 and 2009, leading to 6.1 billion fewer checks cashed in 2009 than in 2006. Because the ACH system was used to convert some checks by billers and merchant bank account users, the number of checks cashed is not equal to the number of checks written, which declined slower than the number of checks cashed. There were 5.3 billion more checks written in 2006 than in 2009; the decline was 5.7 percent per year.

The average amount of checks cashed declined from $1,363 in 2006 to $1,292 in 2009. When we include the checks that were converted to ACH, which averaged $227 in 2009, the value of the average written check fell from $1,278 in 2006 to $1,165 in 2009. The fall in the average value probably reflects the recession that existed throughout the latter part of the examined period, and does not necessarily constitute a permanent change in consumers and business financial behavior.

Over the past 3 years, the level of checks cashed electronically more than doubled. These changes are expanding the efficacy of the ACH system for interbank checks - those cashed on a different depository financial institution than the one at which the checks were deposited. An estimated 97 percent of these checks featured the replacement of the initial paper check with an electronic payment version at some point in the process, compared to a calculated 43 percent at the time of the previous 3-year period.

From 2006 to 2009, the number of checks bounced at the merchant bank account level declined by 6.1 percent per year, from 153 million to 127 million. For the period, the number of checks cashed also fell, and the ratio of bounced checks to cashed checks declined from 0.50 percent in 2006 to 0.52 percent in 2009. The total value of bounced checks declined 11.4 percent per year during the same period, from $182 billion in 2006 to $127 billion in 2009. The ratio of bounced checks to cashed checks by value fell from 0.44 percent to 0.40 percent.