Direct Debit Payments - Overview
ACH Payments allows your customers to pay their invoices directly via their bank account. Once your customer approves the direct debit payment, their bank account will be automatically charged on every renewal. Usually, they are processed via financial networks like the ACH in US, Bacs in the UK, SEPA in Europe.
Points to Note
- It is advised to enable direct debit payments only for the customers that you know and trust. Because, direct debit payments can be initiated even if the customer has insufficient funds in the bank account and hence the transaction may end up failing. This leaves room for fraudulent transactions in case of new users, especially because of the longer authorization and transfer process than card payments.
- Zoho Subscriptions does not support direct debit as a payment method option on the public hosted payment pages. You can enable direct debit for the customers in Customers module.
- Unlike card payments, where authorization and fund transfer takes place almost immediately, the authorization and fund transfer can take anywhere from 3-15 days depending on the gateway.
ACH Payments in United States
ACH payments in US can be processed via Authorize.Net and Forte.
- Choosing the payment gateway
- Configuring ACH for a customer
- Update customer bank account
- Update your bank account
- Email notifications
Choosing the payment gateway
You can choose to process ACH payments via Authorize.Net or Forte or both. But before choosing the payment gateway, make sure to read the respective perquisites below.
Things to know before choosing Authorize.Net{authorize.net}
- You must be a US merchant selling to US customers.
- Zoho Subscriptions may take anywhere from 5-15 days to process a transaction.
- You must have configured Authorize.Net account for your organization in Zoho Subscriptions. Learn more
- You must have eCheck account approved by Authorize.Net. Learn more
How ACH payments are processed in Zoho Subscriptions with Authorize.Net?
As soon as an ACH Payment is initiated inside Zoho Subscriptions, Authorize.Net marks the transaction as settled. But, there are chances that it could be declined after a couple of days despite being marked as settled.
To avoid this confusion, when an ACH payment is initiated, Zoho Subscriptions will wait 15 days before it mark the transaction as Success. From the day after initiation, Zoho Subscriptions will check daily with Authorize.Net for any changes in transaction status. If there are any changes, the Zoho Subscriptions will mark the transaction as Failure and will leave the invoice open. If there aren’t any failures even after 15 days, the transaction will be marked as Success and the invoice will be marked as Paid. During the 15-day waiting period, the respective invoice will be marked as Overdue or Sent based on the Payment Terms.
Things to know before choosing Forte
- You must either be a US merchant selling to US customers or a Canadian merchant selling to Canadian Customers.
- Zoho Subscriptions may take anywhere from 4-8 days to process a transaction.
- You must have configured Forte account for your organization in Zoho Subscriptions. Learn more
- You must have Automated Clearing House account approved by Forte. Learn more
How ACH payments are processed in Zoho Subscriptions with Forte?
When an ACH Payment is initiated in Zoho Subscriptions, Forte waits 3-5 days before updating the status until they receive appropriate response from the ACH. Only then they will mark the transaction as settled or failure. From the day after initiation, Zoho Subscriptions will check in periodically with Forte to update the transaction status.
Configuring ACH for a customer
Once you’ve configured the respective gateway, follow the steps below to configure ACH payment for a customer.
- Step 1: Allow customer to pay via their bank account
- Step 2: Adding customer bank account information
- By you
- By the customer
- Step 3: Enabling ACH for a subscription
- For a new subscription
- For an existing subscription
Step 1: Allow customer to pay via their bank account
If your customer wants to pay via ACH, you have to enable the checkbox Allow customer to pay via his/her bank account in the customer Edit screen.
Step 2: Adding customer bank account information
The bank account added here will be charged on every subscription renewal. Bank account can be added in two ways - by the customer or by you.
Once bank account is added, you can associate it to the customer’s subscription and make it online.
By the customer:
You can use the Request Payment Method to get the card/bank account details from them.
What this Request Payment Method essentially does is that it will send your customers a form to their email address requesting them to enter their card/bank account details. Once added, it will reflect under the respective customer inside Zoho Subscriptions.
To request your customers for bank account,
- Go to the Customers module and select the customer for whom you want to add the bank account details.
- Select the More button at the top-right and click on Request Payment Method. Once done, Zoho Subscriptions will send an email to your customer’s email address with your organization details and they can add their bank account using the link provided in the email.
- Once the customer adds their bank account, it will reflect inside Zoho Subscriptions.
By you:
There can come a situation where your customers would want you to add their bank account for them.
To add a bank account for the customer,
- Go to the Customers module and select the customer to whom you want to add the bank account.
- Select the More button at the top-right and click on Add Bank Account respectively.
- In the following screen, enter the bank account details and click on Save.
Step 3: Enabling ACH for a subscription
Once bank account is successfully added, you have to manually associate the banks account to the subscription so that Zoho Subscriptions can automatically charge customer’s bank account on every renewal.
To associate a bank account for a subscription,
- Navigate to the Customers module and select the customer.
- Next, click on the subscription for which you want to associate the bank account with.
- In the subscriptions details page next, scroll down and click on the Associate Payment Options button and click Associate Bank Account.
- In the following screen, select the bank account using the radio button and click Save and Change to online button.
If Save is clicked instead, the bank account will be associated to the subscription but it will not been charged on renewals. It’ll still be an offline subscription.
Update customer’s bank account
If your customer wants to update their bank account, they can use their Customer Portal. Click here to know more. Once updated, it will reflect inside Zoho Subscriptions.
Update your bank account
When your bank account is updated, all your ACH payments will be deposited to this updated bank account.
If you’re using Authorize.Net,
- Login to your Authorize.Net account.
- Click on Account tab at the top-right and click on Billing Information from the left pane.
- In the following screen, click the edit button above the existing bank account details and update the new bank account.
If you’re using Forte,
- To change the bank account associated with your Forte account, we recommend you to get in touch with the Forte team at techsupport@forte.net
Email notifications
In Zoho Subscriptions, with respect to ACH payments, following email notifications will be sent to the customers. Learn more.
- Payment Initiated
- Payment Thank-you
- Payment Refund
- Subscription Renewal (if configured)
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