NACHA Awards 2005 Payments System Award to Citigroup

In 2004, Citigroup originated 425 million ACH payments, including on-us items, doubling its volume of 2003, and in the process jumping from the eighth to the fifth largest bank originator of ACH payments, according to the NACHA Top 50 list.

Seventy-eight percent of Citigroup's ACH growth is attributable to a decision by its Citi Cards business unit to use ARC to convert checks it receives from its cardholders into ACH debits. In 2004 Citi Cards converted 162 million of these checks into ACH debits. At its current rate, the Citi Cards unit alone will use ARC to convert 300 million checks into ACH debits in 2005.

"Citigroup has embraced the push to eliminate its own paper-based payments and collections throughout the organization," said Steve Garofalo, President & CEO Citibank (Nevada), NA of Citi Cards. "Citi Cards is extremely pleased with the success of ARC, and with the extremely high levels of consumer acceptance of these "ARC'ed" transactions."

In addition to ARC, Citi Cards uses Internet-initiated (WEB) and telephone initiated (TEL) e-checks to collect payments from its cardholders. In 2004, Citi Cards originated 39 million and 8 million of these payments, respectively.

Including other business units covering mortgages, loans, insurance, investments, payroll and pensions, as well as its own vendor payments, Citigroup used the ACH Network for 255 million of its internal payments in 2004, and is on pace for 400 million in 2005.