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The Clearing House’s CHIPS network strengthened its position in 2025 as a core piece of the US payments architecture, posting solid growth in both value and volume while reinforcing its role in large-value domestic and cross-border dollar transactions.
CHIPS growth
According to figures released by The Clearing House, CHIPS recorded a 9 per cent rise in average daily value last year to $2.014tn, alongside a 12 per cent increase in average daily payment volume.
The performance suggests that, even amid the industry’s fascination with instant payments and next-generation rails, the market for high-value wholesale settlement remains both active and strategically important.
Liquidity efficiency remains CHIPS’ defining advantage
What distinguishes CHIPS is not simply the scale of payments it processes, but the efficiency with which it does so.
By continuously matching and offsetting payments throughout the day, the network allows participants to recycle liquidity sooner and reduce the amount of capital tied up in prefunding requirements.
That mechanism generated average daily economic savings of $15.4mn in 2025, up from $14.3mn a year earlier, with annualised savings reaching $5.5bn. For participating banks, that is not a marginal operational gain.
It represents balance sheet capacity that can be redirected towards lending, investment activity and client funding needs rather than remaining trapped in settlement buffers.
Michael Knorr, senior vice-president for CHIPS product management at The Clearing House, argued that the network gives institutions greater flexibility in managing intraday liquidity under changing market conditions while preserving resilience and funding access.
Resilience and optionality are becoming more valuable
The broader significance of CHIPS’ growth lies in how banks are thinking about infrastructure. Institutions are not only drawn to liquidity savings, but also to routing flexibility between CHIPS and Fedwire as part of a more resilient payments strategy.
That matters in a market where redundancy, transparency and operational continuity are increasingly prized.
The Clearing House has already pointed to broader momentum across its payments businesses, including RTP and EPN. CHIPS’ latest results show that, far from being overshadowed by newer payment technologies, established wholesale networks remain central to how capital moves efficiently through the financial system.
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