Bank Account Verification

Verify bank account details and ownership when linking accounts for payments or payouts.

Every new bank account linked to Payload is verified through either an external verification service, like Plaid, or through Payload's built-in verification API. In situations where a bank doesn't support Plaid or Plaid doesn't make sense for the use-case, you can link and verify a bank account using Payload's built-in verification.

Understanding Verification Results

A linked bank account payment method has a verification_status field with the resulting status of the verification. There are three values that can result from the verification attempt:

not_verified

An account with verification status not_verified indicates that verification could not be performed. This is usually due to the bank or financial institution not supporting account verification. Transactions against an unverified account can be rejected if the account details were miskeyed or incorrect.

verified

An account with verification status verified indicates the account details were confirmed with the bank or financial institution. It also means that an ownership match on the account was either unsuccessful or not able to be performed.

owner_verified

An account with verification status owner_verified indicates the account details were confirmed with the bank or financial institution and there was an ownership match found. An ownership match can only be performed if the bank account is tied to a customer, or if the account_holder field is provided.

Bank Account Fields

The following fields are used when linking a bank account for verification.

Testing Verification

Use the following values with a test API key to try out the different response conditions.

Verifying via the API

When you create a bank account payment method with account_holder provided, Payload automatically performs verification. The verification_status field on the response indicates the result.

import payload
pl = payload.Session('secret_key_3bW9...', api_version='v2')
 
payment_method = pl.PaymentMethod.create(
    type='bank_account',
    account_holder='John Doe',
    bank_account={
        'account_number': '123456789',
        'routing_number': '110000000',
        'account_type': 'checking'
    },
    account_id='acct_customer123'
)
 
print(f"Payment Method ID: {payment_method.id}")
print(f"Verification Status: {payment_method.verification_status}")