Cost of Plaid with Stripe ACH Payments

[sixullc]

In case anyone else in the US is interested (this is limited to US banks at this time), I had a client use the Stripe ACH payment method. The client said that it worked really well. I tried it out and not every bank is supported, but a lot seem to be available.

Stripe ACH uses Plaid to get the bank information for the transfers. I was excited for this option, but no where did it clearly state how much it would cost to use Plaid in this integration and I couldn't get an answer from them or from WHMCS. Well, it looks like I have the answer. I was just billed $1.50 for what Plaid listed on my invoice as "Auth usage." I think that's essentially finding and passing on the clients bank info to the Stripe system. And from what I understand, that only needs to happen once per client (or when they change banks). My client has made 3 separate payments so far with Stripe ACH and there was just the one charge from Plaid.

Hope that helps anyone else that might be considering this payment option. I'm definitely keeping it and I'm very pleased with how well it works. Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about my experience.

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Thanks for sharing your experience @sixullc!

 

[vinc1402]

Isn't it free for the first 100 linked bank accounts?

I'm requesting developer access but it seems to be taking a while now.

[sixullc]

Hi @vinc1402

I did read somewhere that the first 100 integrations were supposed to be free, but it was never really clear if that was part of this Stripe/Plaid integration. Apparently it was not a part of this, because I was charged $1.50 for my very first "Auth Usage" as Plaid called it. I haven't rolled it out to clients yet, but I suspect I'll get charged from Plaid every time a client adds/changes a bank account. It's worth it to me though considering the almost 3% credit cards charge. Even with the $1.50 charge, this is definitely much cheaper.

By the way, I never received a response from Plaid after applying for my API Key to be switched from Sandbox to the live environment. However, I logged back in a couple days later and it was live and worked just fine.

[slable]

@sixullc Thanks for the info! We've been testing it and are pleased, the only issue is that Plaid seems to have more issues with banks that require 2FA where it just puts the customer in a loop asking for the 2FA code over and over again. We've opened tickets with Plaid about these banks that are having issues. Have you had this problem and were you able to get it resolved quickly?

 

What do you do when Plaid does not support the customer's bank? I can't find any sort of "use micro deposits instead" option like I'm used to seeing on other sites. I can manually add the bank info to Square and use micro deposits to verify, but then WHMCS doesn't know about it and can't automatically charge it.

[sixullc]

On 9/1/2020 at 3:50 PM, slable said:

@sixullc Thanks for the info! We've been testing it and are pleased, the only issue is that Plaid seems to have more issues with banks that require 2FA where it just puts the customer in a loop asking for the 2FA code over and over again. We've opened tickets with Plaid about these banks that are having issues. Have you had this problem and were you able to get it resolved quickly?

 

What do you do when Plaid does not support the customer's bank? I can't find any sort of "use micro deposits instead" option like I'm used to seeing on other sites. I can manually add the bank info to Square and use micro deposits to verify, but then WHMCS doesn't know about it and can't automatically charge it.

Hi @slable.

We haven't had that 2FA issue yet, or at least we haven't heard about it from our clients. If I hear, I'll let you know.

I just ask the customer to use a different payment method if their bank isn't listed. I might be up for manually adding them, but that could open a can-O-worms in regard to manually adjusting invoices, but I do it now with checks, so probably wouldn't be a huge issue.

Regarding the micro-deposits, I don't think WHMCS/Stripe/Plaid have that option yet, although it would be great if they did.

[slable]

6 minutes ago, sixullc said:

Hi @slable.

We haven't had that 2FA issue yet, or at least we haven't heard about it from our clients. If I hear, I'll let you know.

I just ask the customer to use a different payment method if their bank isn't listed. I might be up for manually adding them, but that could open a can-O-worms in regard to manually adjusting invoices, but I do it now with checks, so probably wouldn't be a huge issue.

Regarding the micro-deposits, I don't think WHMCS/Stripe/Plaid have that option yet, although it would be great if they did.

Thanks for the reply! Just FYI a few updates I've found out since I last posted:

If Plaid doesn't support the bank account, I found a work around. You can manually add the bank account in the Stripe portal (create a new customer, then add payment method). This will initiate micro deposits which you then have to return to Stripe to enter once the customer tells you the amounts. Once you've done this, you can use the createRemoteBankPayMethod class (https://classdocs.whmcs.com/7.10/WHMCS/User/Client.html#method_createRemoteBankPayMethod) to add the customer's Stripe customer token and payment token into the WHMCS database (tblbankaccts.bank_data). We wrote a very short hook so we can do it via the admin portal, and it works beautifully. The only downside is that we have to do all of this manually, and the customer can't do it from the customer portal. Once we finish the setup for the customer though, it works perfectly and payments are taken automatically. So it's a hassle upfront, but then it's great moving forward.

I love the concept of Plaid, but we seem to have about a 20% success rate with it. Most of our customers' banks either don't support it, or it gets hung up with the 2FA portion. I submitted tickets to Plaid for every failed attempt and they were not very helpful most of the time. I think there were only 1 or 2 banks where they were able to fix the problem. The rest of them were apparently not supported or they just couldn't give us an answer as to why it didn't work. Very frustrating.

[sixullc]

15 minutes ago, slable said:

Thanks for the reply! Just FYI a few updates I've found out since I last posted:

If Plaid doesn't support the bank account, I found a work around. You can manually add the bank account in the Stripe portal (create a new customer, then add payment method). This will initiate micro deposits which you then have to return to Stripe to enter once the customer tells you the amounts. Once you've done this, you can use the createRemoteBankPayMethod class (https://classdocs.whmcs.com/7.10/WHMCS/User/Client.html#method_createRemoteBankPayMethod) to add the customer's Stripe customer token and payment token into the WHMCS database (tblbankaccts.bank_data). We wrote a very short hook so we can do it via the admin portal, and it works beautifully. The only downside is that we have to do all of this manually, and the customer can't do it from the customer portal. Once we finish the setup for the customer though, it works perfectly and payments are taken automatically. So it's a hassle upfront, but then it's great moving forward.

I love the concept of Plaid, but we seem to have about a 20% success rate with it. Most of our customers' banks either don't support it, or it gets hung up with the 2FA portion. I submitted tickets to Plaid for every failed attempt and they were not very helpful most of the time. I think there were only 1 or 2 banks where they were able to fix the problem. The rest of them were apparently not supported or they just couldn't give us an answer as to why it didn't work. Very frustrating.

That's great info @slable. Thanks for sharing. I'm trying to transition away from checks so I might need to use your solution in the near future. I'm not sure how to use the createRemoteBankPayMethod class, but I'll look into it.  A hook for the admin portal would be fantastic!

Thanks again for the update.

[slable]

Just now, sixullc said:

That's great info @slable. Thanks for sharing. I'm trying to transition away from checks so I might need to use your solution in the near future. I'm not sure how to use the createRemoteBankPayMethod class, but I'll look into it.  A hook for the admin portal would be fantastic!

Thanks again for the update.

It took a bit of work with our developer to figure it out, but overall it was a pretty easy task in the end. Only about 100 lines of code or so.

Edited September 29, 2020 by slable

[PatriaCo]

On 9/29/2020 at 2:31 PM, slable said:

It took a bit of work with our developer to figure it out, but overall it was a pretty easy task in the end. Only about 100 lines of code or so.

@slable any chance your developer could make the hook available to the community? 

[RandallKent]

@slable - Curious if you'd be willing to share the code with the community?

@PatriaCo / @sixullc - Did either of you find a way to do this? 

[yodhsur]

 might be up for manually adding them, but that could open a can-O-worms in regard to manually adjusting invoices