The ACH system was based on older check (cheque) clearing systems. In those systems the bank in which the check was eventually deposited was basically pulling funds.
The US never had a Giro system. The main push based payments have generally been "wire transfers", which have significant cost, or ACH-based Direct Deposit, which is pretty much only used for payroll situations.
Even payment cards are fundamentally a pull based system.
Only Paypal, Venmo, CashApp, or other similar services have a push model, and those pretty much always wrap an under the hood ACH pull.
Interesting to learn about the history but why aren't they pushing funds today? It's technically all possible and presumably would have less fraud? Or in other words, why do most of the rest of the world favor pushing funds through their ACH-equivalent systems?
The US never had a Giro system. The main push based payments have generally been "wire transfers", which have significant cost, or ACH-based Direct Deposit, which is pretty much only used for payroll situations.
Even payment cards are fundamentally a pull based system.
Only Paypal, Venmo, CashApp, or other similar services have a push model, and those pretty much always wrap an under the hood ACH pull.