What happens when a Dwolla guest checkout finally clears or fails to clear?

Question

When a guest checkout completes successfully, the redirect and webhook postback are both passed parameters indicating a successful checkout. However, what happens if the ACH fails to clear several days later, or is cancelled by the receiver? Is the only way I can determine this by querying the transaction on the expected clearing date, or is there a webhook I am missing?

If this is accomplished by querying the transaction ID, and I check after the expected clearing date, is it guaranteed to not then clear after that?

Answer 1

Dwolla has a Webhook called "TransactionStatus". That Webhook will POST to your server whenever a transaction's status changes. On a typical transaction, you will get 2 notifications: first, that the transaction entered "pending" mode, and then finally when it enters "processed" (or "failed", "canceled") mode.

Here's a page explaining the different statuses a transaction can be in.

Finally, if you decide to opt out for the manual polling method, you should know that as long as a transaction is in "pending" mode, that are no guarantees either way. That said, its very very rare for a transaction to stay pending after its clearing date.