AutoPay Processing Timeline
This page describes the timing of event on payments. You can see these events by logging into your account on the store and clicking the link that says "AutoPay Payments".
How long does it take for payments to process through the AutoPay system? When will the money come out of the borrower's bank account? When will the payment show up in Moneylender? When will the funds be deposited in my bank account? This page will answer those questions for you.
ACH stands for Automated Clearing House. It's the Federal Reserve's electronic upgrade to the check clearing house from before digital information existed. Banks used to physically send paper checks to federal clearing houses, where those checks were sorted and routed to the destination banks and institutions. When electronic communications became commercially viable for the banking industry, the ACH system was created to allow the digital processing of transactions that would otherwise be processed by physical paperwork.
ACH has been around since the early 1970s. Banks submit lists of debit and credit transactions to the ACH network where transactions are grouped by routing number and handed off to the bank assigned to the routing number. When a bank receives a transaction through the ACH network, it updates the balances of the affected accounts accordingly. There is no confirmation mechanism in the ACH standard, when a bank receives its transaction list, all transactions are considered concluded.
Clearly, there's a problem if the bank receives a transaction debiting a customer's bank account for $5000, but the customer's account only has $250 in it. For any transaction received by a bank, it my submit a new transaction back to the ACH network indicating the original transaction number, that it is being dishonored, and a reason code for why the transaction is being dishonored. Then the originating bank retrieves the return transaction and accordingly reverses the transactions pursuant to the transaction that was returned.
When a bank receives a debit or credit transaction, it has three business days to submit its own return transaction back to the ACH network. Thus if we submit a debit request, we don't know if the transaction will be honored until three business days expire without notice of return from the payor's bank.
Transactions are submitted with an effective date which can never be less than one business day in the future.
Timeline for payments from a known good bank account:
| Business Days |
Event |
| 0 or prior | A payment is scheduled in AutoPay by borrower, lender, or a recurring payment setting. |
| 0 | At 4:30PM Eastern time, the payments scheduled for the following business day are sent to Actum Processing. You'll see "payment submitted for processing." in the payment log entries. This is when processing starts and the payment can't be cancelled anymore. |
| 0 | Actum Processing submits the debit transactions to the ACH network with an effective date of the following business day. |
| 1 | Actum notifies the AutoPay system that the payment has been submitted to the bank network, and this is reflected in the payment log. |
| 1 | Borrower banks apply the debits to the borrowers' accounts. This is usually the scheduled date. |
| 1-3 | Borrower banks are now in the window where they may send a return notice back to the ACH network. |
| 4 | No return notice was received. Actum notifies AutoPay that the payments are considered successful and submits a deposit transaction to the ACH network to put the funds from the payment in the lender's bank account. |
| 5 | Lender's bank applies the credit transaction to the lender's account and funds are available for use. |
If a payment begins processing on Friday, it will generally show up in your account the following Friday unless it is returned or there's a federal holiday.
When a borrower submits the authorization to debit their bank account through a website, NACHA (the organization that oversees the ACH protocol and the banks that can communicate with the clearing houses) reques a verification step be performed before a debit is allowed to be sent. Once verified, this step does not need to be performed for subsequent transactions.
If a payment will need to undergo the Prenotification step and the payment is entered in AutoPay with a little bit of lead time, AutoPay will run the payment early so the actual debit of funds happens on the target date. If the payment is not scheduled in AutoPay ahead of time, the payment will begin processing immediate and the borrower will get credit on the chosen payment date when the payment completes processing, even though funds didn't actually come out of their bank for a few extra days.
Timeline for payments when you see (Prenotification) in the payment log:
| Business Days |
Event |
| 0 or prior | A payment is scheduled in AutoPay by borrower, lender, or a recurring payment setting, and the payment will debit from a bank account that has been newly entered on the AuotPay borrower portal. |
| 0 | At 4:30PM Eastern time, the payments scheduled for the following business day are sent to Actum Processing. You'll see "payment submitted for processing with prenote." in the payment log entries. This is when processing starts and the payment can't be cancelled anymore. |
| 0 | Actum Processing submits a prenotification transaction to the ACH network with an effective date of the following business day. |
| 1 | Actum notifies AutoPay that the prenotification is submitted. |
| 1-3 | Borrower's bank receives the prenotification and has three days to return it and indicate what's invalid about the bank account - unable to locate, invalid account number format, etc. |
| 4 | No return notice was received on the prenotification. Actum submits a debit to the ACH network. |
| 5 | Actum notifies AutoPay that it submitted the debit transaction to the ACH network. From here on out, the timeline matches the normal timeline for already verified bank accounts. |
| 5 | Debit is received by the borrower's bank and funds are removed from the borrower's bank account. |
| 5-7 | The borrower's bank has three days to decide if they will return this debit. |
| 8 | No return notice was received. Actum notifies AutoPay that the payments are considered successful and submits a deposit transaction to the ACH network to put the funds from the payment in the lender's bank account. |
| 9 | Lender's bank applies the credit transaction to the lender's account and funds are now available for use. |