Accept an ACH Direct Debit payment
Caution
Stripe automatically presents your customers payment method options by evaluating their currency, payment method restrictions, and other parameters. We recommend that you configure your payment methods from the Stripe Dashboard using the instructions in Accept a payment.
If you want to continue manually configuring the payment methods you present to your customers with Checkout, use this guide (for example, to accept payments in Subscription mode). Otherwise, migrate to the dashboard.
Stripe users in the US can use Checkout in payment mode to accept ACH Direct Debit payments.
A Checkout Session represents the details of your customer’s intent to purchase. You create a Session when your customer wants to pay for something. After redirecting your customer to a Checkout Session, Stripe presents a payment form where your customer can complete their purchase. After your customer has completed a purchase, they are redirected back to your site.
With Checkout, you can create a Checkout Session with us_bank_account
as a payment method type to track and handle the states of the payment until the payment completes.
Note
ACH Direct Debit is a delayed notification payment method, which means that funds aren’t immediately available after payment. A payment typically takes 4 business days to arrive in your account.
Determine compatibility
A Checkout Session must satisfy all of the following conditions to support ACH Direct Debit payments:
- Express all Prices for all line items in US dollars (currency code
usd
).
Create or retrieve a customer
To reuse a bank account for future payments, attach it to a Customer.
Create a Customer object when your customer creates an account with your business. Associating the ID of the Customer object with your own internal representation of a customer enables you to retrieve and use the stored payment method details later.
Create a new Customer or retrieve an existing Customer to associate with this payment. Include the following code on your server to create a new Customer.
Accept a payment
Note
Build an integration to accept a payment with Checkout before using this guide.
This guides you through enabling ACH Direct Debit and shows the differences between accepting a card payment and using this payment method.
Enable ACH Direct Debit as a payment method
When creating a new Checkout Session, you need to:
- Add
us_bank_account
to the list ofpayment_method_types
. - Make sure all your
line_items
use theusd
currency. - Set the
permissions
parameter to includepayment_method
.
If you want to access additional data on an account, sign up for Stripe Financial Connections.
Stripe Financial Connections lets your customers securely share their financial data by linking their financial accounts to your business. Use Financial Connections to access customer-permissioned financial data such as tokenized account and routing numbers, balance data, ownership details, and transaction data.
We recommend specifying balances
in the permissions parameter to access balance data on an account. Checking an account balance after accepting a payment helps you confirm a customer has sufficient funds to cover the payment.
Optionally, specify which data you require immediately upon account creation with the prefetch
parameter. The prefetch
parameter saves you from making another API call to retrieve data after account creation and reduces the latency of data retrieval. To protect the privacy of your customer’s data, you only receive access to account data you request. Your customer can see the data you want to access before verifying their account.
Note
To expand access to additional data after a customer authenticates their account, they must re-link their account with expanded permissions.
During the Checkout session, the customer sees a dialog that gives them the option to use instant verification or provide bank account details for microdeposit verification.
If the customer opts for microdeposit verification, Stripe automatically sends two small deposits to the provided bank account. These deposits can take 1-2 business days to appear on the customer’s online bank statement. When the deposits are expected to arrive, the customer receives an email with a link to confirm these amounts and verify the bank account with Stripe. After verification is complete, the payment begins processing.
Fulfill your orders
After accepting a payment, learn how to fulfill orders.
Because ACH Direct Debit is a delayed notification payment method, you must also complete the handle delayed notification payment methods step of the guide.
Test your integration
To test scenarios with instant verifications, mimic different scenarios for ACH charges by selecting the test bank account for the use case you want to test.
Send transaction emails in test mode
After you collect the bank account details and accept a mandate, send the mandate confirmation and microdeposit verification emails in test mode. To do this, provide an email in the payment_method_data.billing_details[email]
field in the form of {any-prefix}+test_email@{any_domain}
when you collect the payment method details.
Common mistake
You need to activate your Stripe account before you can trigger these emails in Test mode.
Test account numbers
Stripe provides several test account numbers and corresponding tokens you can use to make sure your integration for manually-entered bank accounts is ready for production.
Account number | Token | Routing number | Behavior |
---|---|---|---|
000123456789 | pm_usBankAccount_success | 110000000 | The payment succeeds. |
000111111113 | pm_usBankAccount_accountClosed | 110000000 | The payment fails because the account is closed. |
000111111116 | pm_usBankAccount_noAccount | 110000000 | The payment fails because no account is found. |
000222222227 | pm_usBankAccount_insufficientFunds | 110000000 | The payment fails due to insufficient funds. |
000333333335 | pm_usBankAccount_debitNotAuthorized | 110000000 | The payment fails because debits aren’t authorized. |
000444444440 | pm_usBankAccount_invalidCurrency | 110000000 | The payment fails due to invalid currency. |
000666666661 | pm_usBankAccount_failMicrodeposits | 110000000 | The payment fails to send microdeposits. |
000555555559 | pm_usBankAccount_dispute | 110000000 | The payment triggers a dispute. |
Before test transactions can complete, you need to verify all test accounts that automatically succeed or fail the payment. To do so, use the test microdeposit amounts or descriptor codes below.
Test microdeposit amounts and descriptor codes
To mimic different scenarios, use these microdeposit amounts or 0.01 descriptor code values.
Microdeposit values | 0.01 descriptor code values | Scenario |
---|---|---|
32 and 45 | SM11AA | Simulates verifying the account. |
10 and 11 | SM33CC | Simulates exceeding the number of allowed verification attempts. |
40 and 41 | SM44DD | Simulates a microdeposit timeout. |
Additional considerations
Microdeposit verification failure
When a bank account is pending verification with microdeposits, the customer can fail to verify for three reasons:
- The microdeposits failed to send to the customer’s bank account (this usually indicates a closed or unavailable bank account or incorrect bank account number).
- The customer made 10 failed verification attempts for the account. Exceeding this limit means the bank account can no longer be verified or reused.
- The customer failed to verify the bank account within 10 days.
If the bank account fails verification for one of these reasons, you can handle the checkout.session.async_payment_failed
event to contact the customer about placing a new order.