ACH (Automated Clearing House) is a network used for electronically moving money between bank accounts across the United States. It’s run by an organisation called Nacha and may also be referred to as the ACH network or ACH scheme.

ACH is the network/scheme that allows US-based businesses to accept direct debit payments from customers with a US bank account. These are electronic bank-to-bank payments rather than going through the card networks such as Visa or Mastercard.

At the moment, Billsby supports ACH Direct Debit payments through Stripe. We intend to add support for more payment gateways in the future.

To set up ACH in your Billsby account, you'll need to add a Stripe payment gateway. Navigate to Settings > Configuration > Payment gateways. Then, click the Add button next to Stripe on the right-hand side, and select the Connect with Stripe button.

This will redirect you to Stripe and commence the OAuth process. Now you'll need to connect your Billsby account with Stripe.

You will then be redirected back to Billsby where you can give your new gateway a display name, and add it to your list of payment gateways by clicking the Save Gateway Changes button.

After you've saved your gateway, you'll need to link it to a currency before you can start using it for payments. To do this, navigate to Configuration > Currencies. For the USD currency, you will have the option to assign a payment gateway for card payments as well as one for ACH payments. This allows you to select a different gateway for each if you'd like to.

To start charging customers using ACH Direct Debit, click the ACH dropdown field and select your US-based Stripe gateway. Once you've linked your gateway, click the Save Gateway Link button.

Direct debit payments require you to first get authorization from the customer to debit their bank account. This is done using a mandate and can't be done on a customer's behalf. They must accept the terms specified in the mandate before any money can be collected from their bank account. A mandate form is automatically presented to your customers for your company during the checkout process.

When a customer subscribes to your product/service using the self-service checkout modal, they'll have the option to pay by setting up an ACH mandate.

If you add a new customer in the Billsby app, you'll have the option to send them an ACH mandate request.

You'll be able to find customers in your account that have an ACH mandate added by filtering your customers table by payment method.

When an invoice charge has recently been issued and is still pending on the customer's account, we will show its status as 'Pending'. We batch our invoices so that they are run every five minutes at 00:00, 00:05, 00:10, and so on. You may find that an invoice has the 'Pending' status for up to five minutes. After that, the status of an invoice being paid by ACH direct debit will change to 'Clearing'.

A direct debit payment can take up to four business days from the time the invoice was created (Cut-off time 24:00 UTC) to be settled by the customer's bank. After the invoice has been settled, we'll update the status to either 'Paid' or 'Unpaid' depending on the response from the customer's bank.

Since a direct debit payment can take several days to clear, the customer and their subscription will be created as soon as they checkout. A subscription will remain active unless an unpaid invoice initiates the dunning flow, causing a subscription suspension or cancellation. Invoices being in a clearing state will never affect the subscription status.

Before a customer can authorize direct debit payments, their bank account must be verified. Stripe does this using Financial Connections, allowing customers to authenticate their account directly from our self-service modals.

Micro-deposit verification can be used as an optional fallback method for verifying a customer's bank account, if it couldn't be verified initially. This method involves depositing a small amount into the customer's bank account with a unique 6-digit descriptor code. These micro-deposit transfers can take 1-2 business days to appear in a customer's bank account. The customer would then provide the code so that their account details can be verified.

If a customer's bank account cannot be verified and micro deposit verification is used as a fallback method, we will notify the customer with the following message, and send them an email notification where they'll be able to provide the reference number to verify their bank account and complete their subscription checkout from where they last left off.

You can configure your micro deposit notification preferences by navigating to Settings > Configuration > Payments > ACH micro deposit verification.

Here, you'll be able to turn micro deposit notifications on/off, as well as add a BCC email address so that you can receive copies of the email notification. Make sure to use an active email address as this is where we will send important updates and alerts to. Remember, you can update this email at any time.

Once ACH has been enabled on your account and you decide you'd like to disable it, you can do so by navigating to Settings > Configuration > ACH Settings and toggling the ACH payment method setting off. Then update your ACH preferences.

Since disabling ACH could cause some billing issues for any existing customers who pay via ACH Direct Debit, you'll need to make sure you have no customers with ACH as a payment method before you can disable it.

Disabling ACH will stop any customers being able to select ACH as a payment method when purchasing a new subscription, and adding or updating an ACH Direct Debit as a customer's payment method in the Billsby control panel.

It's important to be aware of the following current limitations regarding the ACH beta.

Unlike credit card payment disputes, all ACH Direct Debit disputes are final and there is no process to appeal. If a customer successfully disputes a payment, you must work with them directly to resolve the situation. Currently, you cant handle ACH disputes through Billsby.

The ACH network allows 60 days for consumers to contest a debit. Business accounts only have 2 business days, however there is no way to be sure if the account is a business or personal account.

Any ACH Direct Debit dispute should be resolved between you and the customer directly through your Stripe payment gateway. You can find more information on Stripe ACH disputes in their documentation here.

Once a payment method has been added for a customer, they won't be able to swap. For example, if your customer's payment method is ACH Direct Debit, they won't be able to change to paying by credit card and vise versa. We'll be adding support for this in a future update, however to swap a customer's payment method in the meantime, you'll have to create a new customer profile and with their desired payment method.

You can only add the option for your customers to pay by ACH Direct Debit in addition to paying by card. It's not currently possible to configure your account so that a customer can only pay by setting up an ACH mandate.

At the moment, the ACH functionality isn't available through our public API. You must use the Billsby checkout modal in order for your customers to pay via ACH Direct Debit.