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

ACH Payments in United States

ACH payments in US can be processed via Authorize.Net and Forte.

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}
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
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

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.

Allow customer to pay via bank account

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,

Request Payment Method

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,

Add Bank Account

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,

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,

If you’re using Forte,

Email notifications

In Zoho Subscriptions, with respect to ACH payments, following email notifications will be sent to the customers. Learn more.

Was this document helpful?
Yes
No
Thank you for your feedback!
zoho subscriptions

Uncomplicate Subscription Billing for your business.