Some customers would rather pay from their checking account than hand over a card, and on a big invoice the fee is a lot smaller for you too. With bank payments on, your customer picks Bank account instead of a card on the invoice pay page and connects their bank through Stripe’s secure form. The payment runs on your own Stripe account, like a card payment, and ClippingCash takes no cut.
1 Check that bank payments are on
Bank payments ride on your Stripe connection, so connect Stripe first. Then go to Settings, open Stripe & payment settings, and find the Bank payments (ACH) card.
- Stripe: Active means Stripe has turned bank payments on for your account. Waiting on Stripe means Stripe is still reviewing it.
- Accept bank payments is on by default. Turn it off if you only want cards.
Only the owner or an admin can change these settings.
2 Know what it costs
Stripe charges 0.8% of a bank payment, capped at $5. A card costs 2.9% + 30¢. On a $300 invoice that is $2.40 by bank against $9.00 by card. ClippingCash adds nothing on top of either.
3 Know where customers can pay by bank
- The invoice pay page. The link in the invoice email or text shows a bank option next to the card form, on every plan that takes online payments (Starter and up).
- The customer portal, on Growing and up. Customers can pay an invoice by bank, or save a bank account under their saved payment methods. Saving one asks them to tick a debit authorization first. A saved bank account can be used for autopay.
- Your office. If a customer has a saved bank account, you can charge it from their invoice like a saved card. The form warns you that the debit starts right away and cannot be undone.
Invoices under $1 are card only. Card links, the worker app and the owner app take cards only.
If Stripe needs to check the account with small test deposits, the customer gets an email to verify it, and the payment starts once they do. A saved bank account shows Verifying until then.
4 Watch it clear
A bank payment is not instant. Once it starts, the customer sees Bank payment started. Expected to clear by a date, and the invoice shows Bank payment processing with the amount. That date is 4 bank business days out, in your company’s time zone, skipping weekends and Federal Reserve holidays.
While it settles, ClippingCash holds the invoice for you:
- It is not marked overdue.
- No payment reminder or late fee goes out for it.
- Nobody can pay it a second time, by card, by bank, or by autopay.
When the money clears, the payment is recorded against the invoice as Bank account with the bank name and last four digits, for example Chase ••6789.
This is different from ACH Transfer in Record a payment. That one is for money a customer sent you some other way, which you log by hand. Bank payments through Stripe record themselves.
5 Know what happens if the bank sends it back
A bank can return a payment, for example for insufficient funds or a closed account, sometimes even after it cleared. When that happens:
- The invoice is open again with the balance owed. A payment that had already cleared is voided.
- You get an alert with the bank’s reason, and your customer gets an email with a way to pay.
- Your Returned payment fee (up to $100) is added to the invoice once, as its own line.
- Your Block bank payments after a bounce days (up to 365) start, and the customer can pay only by card until they end.
The fee and the block are both 0, meaning off, until you set them on the Bank payments (ACH) card. If the customer already paid the invoice another way before the return came in, there is no fee, no block and no email to the customer: only you are told.
If you use QuickBooks, a payment that came back after it cleared is not removed there for you. The alert reminds you to fix it in your books.