Electronic Transactions Hit $20 Trillion Mark

Here a dollar, there a dollar, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. A mind-boggling $20.3 trillion was zapped around the country electronically last year, saving consumers $700 million in postage alone, the Electronic Payments Association reported at its annual conference.

The growing acceptance of direct-deposited paychecks, online payments by consumers and businesses, and corporate solutions such as electronic data interchange combined to create 6.9 billion electronic transactions last year, a 14% increase over 1999.

While 100 million Americans had their payroll checks, travel reimbursements, and benefits deposited directly, such transactions made up just less than half the electronic pie, with 3.3 billion transactions. The biggest increase came on the business-to-business side. EDI partners initiated 129 million electronic transactions, a 22.6% increase, and sent another 353 million EDI addenda records carrying payment-related information--a 30.1% increase. Non-EDI business-to-business payments totaled 1.24 billion, up 11.8%.