Balanced Payments - Can debiting a bank account result in an ACH return?

Question

Looking at the Balanced docs, it appears that debiting a card is the same as debiting a bank account. Just supply the proper source_uri.

But having some experience in the ACH world, I'm know it is traditionally possible for my ACH debit to be returned several days later.

How does Balanced handle this? When Balanced returns a successful response to my attempt to create a Debit, does Balanced have some mechanism to ensure that the ACH debit will be successful? Or is there some mechanism to be notified of a failure?

Answer 1

Absolutely, ACH debits (and credits!) can fail. And due to the asynchronous nature of the ACH network, they can sometimes fail many days after their creation. Take a look at the 'Payment status' section of https://www.balancedpayments.com/ach-debits for some information.

Balanced provides webhooks/callbacks on transaction state updates, so users can always be made aware of the most current state of a transaction. The dashboard will also reflect the most current information, of course, as well as the API's response to a GET request.