Payments, Clearance Times & Settlements

As a payment provider, Pay Advantage processes payments from your customers on your behalf. This process is generally pretty quick for things like credit cards and BPAY. However, some payments, such as direct debit bank payments, may take slightly longer due to bank processing and waiting times.

If a payment has a status of "ready to settle" this means it has cleared our system and will be deposited to your account at the next available chance (generally the next business day).

In some instances you may see a status of held, this generally occurs if our system has flagged the payment for review which can occur for various reasons. In the instance a payment is held these are reviewed by our support team who will either releases funds or contact you to discuss.

Credit/Debit Card Payment Lifecycle

When a payment is made by credit or debit cards, there is an almost immediate response from the bank as to whether the transaction is approved or declined.

Enter the details, wait for the payment to process, and you get an almost immediate response as to if the payment succeeded. The payment is then ready to settle to your account either the next business day, or whichever day you've chosen settlements to occur on.

Bank Payment Lifecycle

A card payment response is generally quick, like an in-person conversation. A debit bank payment is more like sending a letter. Direct Debit Bank Payments are different from card transactions in that there is no immediate response from your customer's bank to say whether the transaction has worked. The customer's bank can decline the transaction up to 3 banking days after the transaction is processed.

As money travels from the customer to your bank account, the transaction is given a series of statuses. A successful transaction will go through the following statuses:

Pending

When a debit transaction is attempted, we start by checking to see if the payment account is legitimate. When it passes all checks, the transaction will be given an Approved status and move into clearing. This process is generally pretty fast.

Approved - Clearing

Payments with the Approved - Clearing status have passed initial checks and are waiting for a response from the bank as to whether the money can be cleared or not. This can take up to 3 days depending on the bank's response times.

Approved - Ready for Settlement

When a successful response is received the money can be cleared, and the payment is marked as Ready for Settlement. The money is sent to your account on the next available business day.

Approved - Held from Settlement

In some instances you may see a status of held, this generally occurs if our system has flagged the payment for review. Some reasons a payment may be flagged include;

• A new account which doesn't have an established trading history
• The account we debit our fees from has dishonoured
• Recent payment disputes or stop payments
• Sudden spike in volume or unusually large amounts

Held payments are reviewed by our support team who will either release the funds or contact you to discuss further.

BPAY Payment Lifecycle

Similar to credit cards BPAY payments are generally processed quickly. As long as your customer makes the payment before their bank's cut-off times, it should process that night, or the next business day.

Once the payment is processed, the money will be sent to your account on the next available business day.

Example

1. Monday 2.30pm a Customer makes a payment (before their banks cutoff)
2. Monday 10.00pm payment information is interchanged between BPAY Billers and the payment will appear within your Pay Advantage account
3. Tuesday 7.00am funds are sent to your nominated financial institution, depending on your bank, funds will generally be available within 2 hours or before close of business.