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Payment scenarios
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Accept a bank transfer

Use the Payment Intents API to accept bank transfer payments.

The first time you accept a bank transfer payment from a customer, Stripe generates a virtual bank account for them, which you can then share with them directly. All future bank transfer payments from this customer get sent to this bank account. In some countries, Stripe also provides you with a unique transfer reference number that your customer should include with each transfer to make it easier to match the transfer against outstanding payments. Some countries have limits on the number of virtual bank account numbers that you can create for free.

You can find an overview of the common steps when accepting a bank transfer payment in the following sequence diagram:

Handling underpayments and overpayments

With bank transfer payments, it’s possible that the customer sends you more or less than the expected payment amount. If the customer sends too little, Stripe partially funds an open payment intent. Invoices won’t be partially funded and remain open until incoming funds cover the full invoice amount.

If the customer sends more than the expected amount, Stripe attempts to reconcile the incoming funds against an open payment and keep the remaining excess amount in the customer cash balance. You can find more details on how Stripe handles reconciliation in the reconciliation section of our documentation.

When a customer underpays:

When a customer overpays:

Handling multiple open payments or invoices

You might have multiple open payments or invoices which can be paid with a bank transfer. In the default setup, Stripe attempts to automatically reconcile the bank transfer by using information like the transfer’s reference code or the amount transferred.

You can disable automatic reconciliation and manually reconcile payments and invoices yourself. You can override the automatic reconciliation behavior on a per-customer basis by setting reconciliation mode to manual.

Caution

Stripe automatically presents your customers payment method options by evaluating their currency, payment method restrictions, and other parameters. We recommend that you configure your payment methods from the Stripe Dashboard using the instructions in Accept a payment.

If you want to continue manually configuring the payment methods you present to your customers with Checkout, use this guide. Otherwise, update your integration to configure payment methods in the Dashboard.

Bank transfer is a single-use payment method for Checkout where customers pay with a bank transfer using payment instructions presented. When selecting to pay, the user is redirected to a hosted page which displays bank transfer instructions and the status of the transfer payment.

Bank transfer is also a delayed notification payment method, which means that funds are not immediately available after payment.

Caution

Bank transfers aren’t available on Checkout Sessions that didn’t include an existing Customer object as part of the of the session creation request.

Determine compatibility

A Checkout Session must satisfy all of the following conditions to support Bank Transfer payments:

  • Prices for all line items must be in the same currency. If you have line items in different currencies, create separate Checkout Sessions for each currency.

  • You can only use one-time line items (Bank Transfer Checkout Sessions don’t support recurring subscription plans).

Accept a payment

Note

Build an integration to accept a payment with Checkout before using this guide.

Use this guide to enable Bank Transfer.

Create or retrieve a Customer

You must associate a Customer object to reconcile each bank transfer payment. If you have an existing Customer object, you can skip this step. Otherwise, create a new Customer object.

Command Line
curl -X POST https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers \
  -u "
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
:"

Enable Bank Transfer as a payment method

When creating a new Checkout Session, you need to:

  1. Set customer
  2. Add customer_balance to the list of payment_method_types
  3. Make sure all your line_items use the same currency
Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
:" \
  -d customer=
{{CUSTOMER_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"=usd \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product_data][name]"=T-shirt \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d mode=payment \
  -d "payment_method_types[0]"=card \
  -d "payment_method_types[1]"=customer_balance \
  -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][funding_type]"=bank_transfer \
  -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][bank_transfer][type]"=us_bank_transfer \
  --data-urlencode success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  --data-urlencode cancel_url="https://example.com/failure"

Redirect to Stripe hosted bank transfer instructions page

Note

Unlike card payments, the customer isn’t always redirected to the success_url with bank transfer payment.

After submit the Checkout form successfully,

  • If the customer already has a balance high enough to cover the request amount, the payment immediately succeeds and the customer is redirected to the success_url.
  • If the customer balance isn’t high enough to cover the request amount, the customer is redirected to the hosted_instructions_url. The page has the instructions to guide your customer through completing the transfer.

Stripe allows customization of customer-facing UIs on the Branding Settings page. The following brand settings can be applied to the hosted instructions page:

  • Icon—your brand image and public business name
  • Brand color—used as the background color

Fulfill your orders

Because bank transfer is a delayed notification payment method, you need to use a method such as webhooks to monitor the payment status and handle order fulfillment. Learn more about setting up webhooks and fulfilling orders.

The following events are sent when the payment status changes:

Event NameDescriptionNext steps
checkout.session.completedThe customer has successfully submitted the Checkout form and is redirected to hosted_instructions_url.Wait for the customer to make the bank transfer.
checkout.session.async_payment_succeededThe customer has successfully made the bank transfer. The PaymentIntent transitions to succeeded.Fulfill the goods or services that the customer purchased.

Test your integration

You can test your integration by simulating an incoming bank transfer using the API, Dashboard, or a beta version of the Stripe CLI.

To simulate a bank transfer using the Dashboard, navigate to the customer’s page in the Dashboard. Under Payment methods, click Add and select Fund cash balance (testmode only).

See also

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On this page
Handling underpayments and overpayments
Handling multiple open payments or invoices
Determine compatibility
Accept a payment
Create or retrieve a Customer
Enable Bank Transfer as a payment method
Redirect to Stripe hosted bank transfer instructions page
Fulfill your orders
Test your integration
See also
Products Used
Payments
Invoicing
Checkout
Elements