ACH Sales

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ACH Sales are applicable to US Acquiring Merchants only.

ACH Sales allow you to accept DDA information (as opposed to a credit card) from your customers.

This page gives a detailed overview of the ACH Sales process. If you are looking for the ability to create an ACH Purchase to pay a Supplier, that is detailed on this page.

Integrating to Accept ACH Sales

We make it easy for you to provide various types of payment options, including ACH, to your customers. You can create an ACH sale via the CREATE SALE API here .

Risk Assessment

ACH Sales are inherently riskier than Credit Card sales. To help mitigate that risk, we've partnered with a third party vendor who has advanced AI capability to help you identify high risk transactions. You will have the option of running risk analysis on each ACH sale you process. Highest risk transactions will be declined. There is a cost associated with each risk assessment request.

Risk declined transactions cannot be processed. You will need to ask your customer for a different form of payment.

Running Risk Only Transactions

In addition to running Risk Analysis as part of the ACH sale creation API, you can also run Risk Analysis on an ACH account without tying it to a sale. For example, if you have a clients banking information and just want to be sure their account is not considered high risk, you can run the Verify endpoint for that consumer's bank account. See developers docs here.

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There are both per ACH transaction fees and per Risk Analysis fees on ACH transactions.

See your contract for pricing but keep in mind the Risk Analysis call is an additional cost.

You can process a sale without running Risk Analysis.

ACH Sales Timing

ACH transactions received by 5:45 PM EST will process overnight.

ACH Transactions received after 5:45 PM will be picked up and processed the following night.

The timing on when the consumer will see the ACH debit hit their bank account will depend on when their bank processes the ACH transaction that was sent to the Fed for processing.

ACH Sales Reporting

There is no dedicated reporting for ACH Sales. But all existing reports include a “Type” to indicate if the Sale was ACH or Credit Card.

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NACHA Requirement to Authorize ACH Sales

The ACH network is the actual technology that moves payments from bank account to bank account. That technology is overseen by NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association), an organization that sets and enforces the rules by which the ACH network needs to abide by. To be in compliance with NACHA regulations for accepting ACH payments, we must be able to provide proof that your customer authorized the debit to their account. If a customer ever contests an ACH payment CXP will need to be able to provide:

  • Screenshot of the widget served to the consumer where they agree to the ACH payment.
  • Date and time of the sale
  • IP address of the consumer (IP address where the sale originated).

It is a requirement that you pass the consumer's IP address in the Sale API.

Cancelling an ACH Sale

If the ACH transaction hasn't been batch processed for the day yet, the sale can be cancelled. Otherwise you will need to process a return in order to credit the consumer.

ACH Sale Rejects

When ACH Transactions do not clear the supplier’s account, they are returned. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including closed accounts, incorrect account numbers, etc. When an item is dishonored, the payment's status will update to 6 - Returned. A return could take up to 60 days to process.

ACH Sale Webhook Events

Information on ACH Sale Webhook events can be found here.

FAQs

How long does it typically take for an ACH sale transaction to complete?

Each banking day any pending ACH sales are pulled for processing at 5:45 PM EST. During processing, transactions are quality controlled for data issues, and sent off to their respective banks which will credit the specified bank account. This will happen overnight at which point the transaction will have a status of ‘Processed’ and should be considered paid.

Is there a chance the ACH transaction could be returned once it hits the ‘Processed’ status?

Is there a chance the ACH transaction could be returned once it hits the ‘Processed’ status?
There is a slight risk it could be returned up to 60 days after it has been processed.
The status of returned sales will be updated to Returned and you will be debited the sale amount.

Can I tokenize by customer's bank account information?

You sure can. When you make an ACH Sale request you are required to include the Bank Account Object in your Create Sale request. The bank account object allows you to provide either a "RoutingNumber" AND "AccountNumber" OR the account token previously obtained ("AccountAndRoutingNumberToken").