Direct Debit US

Nium One platform clients in the United States can accept Automated Clearing House (ACH) Direct Debit payments from business customers with a US bank account.

You can use ACH Direct Debit as many times as you want. Direct Debit is a non-real-time payment method from payment creation, to processing, and acknowledgment of its success or failure.

Refer to the Direct Debit guide for more information.

Prerequisites

These are the requirements for this funding mechanism:

Your customer needs to have a bank account in the US with Direct Debit ACH enabled and a Nium USD wallet.
Your customer needs to have sufficient balance in the added bank account before the payment is initiated, for example when you call the Fund Wallet API.
Your customer needs to authorize the Direct Debit mandate to debit their bank account and accept Nium's terms and conditions (T&C).
Your customer's bank account, to be added to the Nium wallet, needs to be verified.
Your customer should be a corporate customer.

Configuration

URL redirect setup

Nium supports the verification of your customer's bank account through Nium's integration with Plaid Inc.. Your customer is redirected to the page rendered by Plaid Inc. through a URL called return_url, which is returned as a response from calling the Add Funding Instrument API.

Once your customer completes the authentication, they're redirected to your web page or application using the URL domain (customer host and port) you provided during your Direct Debit setup, where you can then show the acknowlegment of the account's addition. The URL redirect format below provides the fundingInstrumentId and shows the status of the fundingInstrumentId :
URL: GET https://<customerHost:Port>?fundingInstrumentId={fundingInstrumentId}&status={status}.

Direct Debit API endpoints

The following APIs support the Direct Debit feature:

HTTP method	API name	Action
POST	Add Funding Instrument	Add the funding instrument to your customer's wallet to start a Direct Debit transaction. Use this API to add the payer's physical bank account to the customer's wallet so that Direct Debit payments can be initiated against it. Provide the funding instrument's country code and currency code.
GET	Get Funding Instrument Details	Get your customer's funding instrument details for a specific funding instrument ID. It's optional to use this API. The `fundingInstrumentId` is returned as a response in the Add Funding Instrument API call.
GET	Get Funding Instrument List	Get the list of funding instruments registered with your customer. It's optional to use this API.
POST	Fund Wallet	Fund into your customer's wallet by selecting the funding channel as a `direct_debit` transaction. You also need to provide the `fundingInstrumentId` obtained from the response in the Add Funding Instrument API call.

Payment flow

Call the Add Funding Instrument API to add your customer’s bank account.
The API returns a return URL that lets you redirect the customer to the Plaid page.
The customer chooses their bank account to add funds through Plaid and completes the authentication.
Nium returns the funding instrument ID.
Call the Fund Wallet API to pull funds into the wallet with the correct funding instrument ID.
Your customer’s bank account is debited.
Nium initiates compliance checks and, after a predetermined time period, credits the money to your customer’s wallet
If the customer raises a chargeback, Nium manages the chargeback according to the terms and conditions agreement.

The following diagram shows the Direct Debit flow.

Funds flow timeline

The customer's bank has 2 business days, after the day of the debit from their account, to reverse the payment. Thus, the cooling-off period takes 2 business days.

A diagram showing the settlement timing for ACH Direct Debit, which takes the standard 4 days. — A diagram showing the settlement timing for ACH Direct Debit, which takes the standard 3 days.

Chargebacks

Your customer can initiate a dispute with their bank within 2 days for a business bank account after the funds are credited to their wallet. If their bank agrees, the money is pulled from the customer's NIUM wallet.