How ACH Payments Work (Legacy)

Learn how donors can make direct bank transfers and how donations are processed.

Jenna Notarfrancesco avatar
Written by Jenna Notarfrancesco
Updated over a week ago

ACH payment is available on any campaign that uses Stripe for donation processing, and it allows donors to pay via a direct bank transfer.

Note: ACH payments are only available for transfers from US bank accounts.

What Is ACH?

ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, which is an electronic network that provides a way to make a direct money transfer from one bank account to another.

In this case, ACH is a payment option on the CauseVox donation form that allows donors to connect a bank account to process their donation and send funds directly from their bank account to your organization's bank account without the use of credit card, wire transfer or cash.

ACH is automatically included on the CauseVox donation form when using Stripe for donation processing.

Benefits Of ACH

ACH payments help you increase donations by giving your donors more flexibility at checkout in addition to:

  • Higher average donation amounts.

  • Low processing fees for Stripe (0.8% with a $5 cap vs the standard 2.2% + $0.30/donation).

  • Increased convenience for your donor by giving more payment options in addition to PayPal, Venmo, Apple/Google Pay, credit and debit card.

  • Easy bank transfers without wires or paperwork.

  • Increased security for you and your donor.

How Do ACH Payments Work?

Donors can pay with ACH at any time on any device for their one-time, recurring and pledge donations.

After the donation is processed, donors are automatically sent a customizable donation receipt.

In your CauseVox Admin interface, you can check the status of donations, refund donations, or resend donation receipts.

ACH On The Donation Form

Here's what the process looks like for your donor:

After the donor selects "US bank account", they'll enter their first and last name, email and search for their bank account to connect.

They can also manually verify their account. This will take about 1-2 business days to confirm.

How Are ACH Donations Processed?

ACH donations show up automatically in the CauseVox admin for easy, real-time reporting.

Since ACH is a direct bank transfer, it can take up to 5 business days for them to fully complete. During this waiting time, you will see the ACH status marked as "Pending" in your admin.

Donations will be displayed publicly on your campaign while the transfer is pending.

Failed ACH Payments

If an ACH payment fails, then in your CauseVox Admin interface, you will see the donation itself marked as "Failed" and removed from the public campaign totals.

Here's how failed payments work for each donation type:

  • One-time donations - Donation is marked as "Failed".

  • Pledges - Installment payment is marked as "Failed". The pledge is marked as "Past due".

  • Recurring donations - Donation is marked as "Failed". Recurring profile is marked as "Past due".

To learn more about ACH payments, email [email protected].

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