The Michigan Automated Clearing House Association reported a 22.8% growth in its commercial transaction volume for 1993, well above the 16.4% national average.
The Detroit-based clearing house said its member financial institutions exchanged 86.2 million paperless debits and credits that originated in the private sector.
Including government payments such as Social Security, the total Michigan ACH volume exceeded 100 million, and were worth $215 billion.
According to the National Automated Clearing House Association, private-sector originations totaled 1.66 billion, up from 1.43 billion in 1992. The 1993 figure would exceeded 2 billion including banks' intra-bank, or on-us, transactions.
The Michigan total does not include on-us payments but does aggregate originated and recived items.
William Thornton, president of the regional clearing house, said it has consistently run ahead of national benchmarks in all measures of ACH activity. He attributes the success to a strong marketing program at the Detroit-based association that supports member banks' sales efforts.
The recently published American Banker ACH survey showed three of the four largest Michigan originators -- Michigan National Bank, First of America Bank, and Old Kent Bank & Trust Co. -- boosted originations between 31% and 46% last year.
Mr. Thornton said most of the growth has been in credits, such as direct payroll deposits, as opposed to automatic debits. Michigan's credits increased by about 30% last year, compared with 19% for the nation.
"Corporations are increasing their use of the ACH network to cut costs and streamline operations," Mr. Thornton said. "Increased use of direct deposit and direct payment will continue as corporations look for ways to re-engineer their payroll, accounts receivable, and accounts payable operations."
