Studio Pro Merchant Services supports ACH payments - direct from bank accounts - alongside credit cards. ACH is currently supported only for Studio Pro Merchant Services businesses based in the US.
First, make sure you have ACH enabled in your Studio Pro Merchant Services account by going to More > Merchant Services > Settings from the left side menu > Payments tab. Check the Allow ACH Payments and Save Changes.
We also highly recommend that you enter an authorization agreement.
**Before a customer can make a payment to you or enroll in Auto-Pay using ACH, they must verify their bank account in the Parent Portal. For security reasons, enrollment in Auto-Pay is done by the parent after they have logged into the Parent Portal.
With Studio Pro Merchant Services ACH enabled, your parents will now see the option to pay using a bank account in your Parent Portal once they have Agreed to your Terms.
In order for your parents to pay you using ACH, they must first verify their banking account information. Because of these required verification steps, you ARE NOT able to enroll a parent into auto-pay using a bank account. The parent will have to log into their parent portal account and set that up. Once a parent has saved and verified a bank account, however, you are able to process payments throughout the Studio Pro system by selecting that bank account from the saved payment methods dropdown when checking out.
There are two options for verification.
1. Verification using bank login
Stripe, the processor that powers Studio Pro Merchant Services, can auto-verify an ACH payment method by linking to the customers bank. This method of verification will allow your customers to begin making payments using their ACH payment method immediately after verification. The parent will search for their banking institution, and follow the instructions to sign in using their banking details, and select which account to connect:
1. Verification using Microdeposits
With microdeposits, your parents will enter their bank account information and then will receive two small deposits in that account. They will then need to return to your parent portal and enter those deposit amounts. If they enter the correct deposit amounts, the bank account is saved for them and they can choose to make online payments with it or enable that account for auto-pay (if you offer auto-pay). These deposits take 1-2 business days to appear on the customer’s online statement. The statement has a description that includes AMTS followed by the two microdeposit amounts.
2. Microdeposits
If they prefer, they can also choose to verify their banking details via manual verification. They would click the link with the text "Enter bank details manually instead,", and then enter their banking details manually.
After they click Add Payment Method, that account is now pending. It CANNOT be used for payment until it is verified by the parent entering the amounts of the deposits they received. Parents with a pending ACH account will see a notification message when they log in.
They can then click that link to enter the deposit amounts and verify the bank account, or they can delete the pending bank account if they need to start over for any reason.
**Even with the required verification steps, ACH payments can still fail for reasons like insufficient funds in the account entered. For this reason, we recommend that you enable ACH Failure notifications in your Studio Pro Merchant Services settings (More > Merchant Services > Settings from the left side menu > Notifications tab). You have the option to send those notifications to your main account email address and/or enter multiple other email addresses.
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