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ACH Direct Debit

Learn how to accept ACH Direct Debit payments.

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Learn about pricing and settlement services for ACH Direct Debit on adyen.com.

ACH Direct Debit is a popular payment method used in the United States and Puerto Rico as an alternative to credit and debit cards. The payments are processed via the Automated Clearing House (ACH), which is an electronic network for processing financial transactions.

To accept ACH Direct Debit payments, you must have a registered business entity in the United States.

Both one-off and recurring payments are supported by ACH. Due to the risk of chargebacks, we do not recommend using ACH Direct Debit for one-off payments.

The ACH network is unable to provide real-time authorisations. This means there is a risk of transactions being reversed if, for example, the bank account has insufficient funds. Additionally, the shopper can initiate a chargeback up to 60 days from the initial date of the direct debit payment.

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Account validation

When accepting ACH Direct Debit payments, Nacha requires you to verify the shopper's bank account, if it is a consumer account.

If you have an API-only integration, you can do this as follows:

  1. Collect the shopper's bank account number, bank routing number, and account holder name.
  2. Before initiating the payment, pass these details in a zero-value authorization request.

We then validate the account through the gVERIFY solution from giact.

ACH Company ID for B2B payments

An ACH Company ID identifies an entity like Adyen that collects payments through the ACH network. Unknown entities are often blocked when they collect payments from business accounts. The transaction will result in a chargeback with reason code R29, Corporate customer advises not authorized.

To prevent unnecessary chargebacks of business-to-business (B2B) transactions, ensure your business customers instruct their bank to add Adyen's ACH Company ID 8263863381 to the list of entities that are allowed to debit or credit their business account.

The Adyen ACH Company ID for payments is 8263863381.

Chargebacks

The ACH network is unable to provide real-time authorizations. This means that a payment can be reversed because of insufficient funds after the payment is authorized. Other reasons why ACH Direct Debit payments are reversed include:

  • Business-to-business transactions can be reversed if your customer's business account does not have Adyen's ACH Company ID in their allowlist.
  • Customers have the right to ask for a refund up to 60 days after the payment is settled to your account.

If an ACH Direct Debit payment is reversed, your Settlement details report shows a credit and a corresponding debit, and you receive a CHARGEBACK webhook with a chargebackReasonCode.

You cannot defend ACH Direct Debit chargebacks. Depending on the reason code, it may be allowed to retry the payment. For an overview of the chargeback process, reason codes, and how to test chargeback scenarios, see ACH Direct Debit chargebacks.

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