NACHA verification

Meet NACHA bank account verification requirements for ACH in Recurly — with built-in support via Adyen (Giact), Stripe (Financial Connections), and Worldpay, plus guidance for external verification with GoCardless and Check Commerce.

NACHA requires merchants accepting ACH web (online) debits to verify consumer bank account details before processing. Recurly supports this through built-in verification flows on Adyen, Stripe, and Worldpay, and provides guidance for external verification on other ACH gateways.

1Definition 2Key details

Prerequisites

Access to one or more supported ACH payment gateways, or
A direct integration with an ACH verification provider such as Plaid or Giact.

Limitations

Only new bank accounts are subject to pre-verification. Bank accounts already on file are not re-verified.
Adyen requires Giact for NACHA verification.
Stripe requires Financial Connections and does not support externally verified bank accounts.

Definition

Recurly's bank account verification support lets merchants verify consumer ACH bank details in the United States before processing a transaction or setting up a subscription — specifically when a new bank account is being provided. This is required for US merchants accepting ACH transactions under NACHA regulations. See NACHA.org and their Account Validation best practices guide for the full regulatory requirements.

Note Not all gateways support built-in pre-verification. For ACH gateways without built-in support, external verification must be completed before sending bank details to Recurly for processing.

Key details

Gateways with built-in NACHA verification

Adyen

Enable Giact with your Adyen account and enable the feature in your Adyen gateway configuration in Recurly.

See the Adyen documentation for setup details.

Stripe

Use Stripe Elements with Stripe's Financial Connections platform to pre-verify bank account details. External verification is not supported on the Stripe gateway.

See the Stripe documentation for setup details.

Worldpay

Worldpay's integration automatically supports pre-verification when a new bank account is provided to Recurly via Recurly.js, the API, or any other supported ACH mechanism. Bank accounts already stored on the same Recurly site are not re-verified. See the Worldpay documentation for setup details.

Gateways requiring external pre-verification

The following gateways require you to verify bank accounts using an external provider before adding billing information to Recurly:

Suggested flow for external verification

You may use an external provider (e.g., Plaid or micro-transaction verification) for any Recurly-supported ACH gateway — excluding Stripe — to verify bank accounts before adding billing information to Recurly.

Best practice is to verify any new bank account provided by a consumer to confirm it can be used for a WEB (online) debit transaction. The direct language from the NACHA mandate (effective March 2021) is:

Validate first-use consumer account information for consumer debit payments authorized or initiated over an online channel (often called WEB Debits).

If your external integration confirms a consumer's bank account is valid for online processing and can be debited, you may proceed with your existing Recurly billing flow.