Last updated: 17 September 2026 | Change log

Automated Clearing House (ACH)/eCheck

A direct debit for US based merchants.

Automated Clearing House (ACH), often referred to as eCheck, allows your customers to pay by transferring funds directly from their bank account.

Note

Make yourself familiar with our API principles to ensure a resilient integration.

Product overview

Processing

Processing of ACH transactions happens overnight (or the next available working day at weekends and holidays). The handling bank issues regular reports outlining the successful and failed payments. Once the payment is successful, you can release the goods and services to the customer.

Feature summary

Payment type	Countries	Currencies	Recurring	Reversals	Partial reversals	Chargebacks
Direct Debit	US	USD	❌	✅	❌	❌

Cancel or refund a transaction

In some cases you may wish to cancel a sale request. You can do this using a reversal request. You must do this within three hours of the sale request, on the same US business day, or it will be processed as a refund.

If your original reversal is not successful for any reason, you must re-send the reversal request after the three hour timeframe in order to make a refund request.

Note

Chargebacks and refunds can occur, and are managed directly at acquirer level.

Get started

Use our API reference and set your headers.

Request

POST https://try.access.worldpay.com/apmPayments

Apply APM payment details directly using our APMs API, or use our Components SDK to create a session.

Example requests

Collect the APM details and send an API request with these details to create a payment.

{
  "transactionReference": "Memory265-13/08/1876",
  "orderReference": "apm-order-12345",
  "merchant": {
    "entity": "default"
  },
  "instruction": {
    "method": "ach",
    "narrative": {
      "line1": "MindPalace"
    },
    "value": {
      "amount": 750,
      "currency": "USD"
    },
    "paymentInstrument": {
      "type": "direct",
      "accountType": "checking",
      "accountNumber": "01234567890123456",
      "routingNumber": "012345678",
      "checkNumber": "012345678901234",
      "companyName": "Worldpay",
      "billingAddress": {
        "address1": "8500 Governors Hill Drive",
        "address2": "Symmes Township",
        "postalCode": "45249",
        "city": "Ohio",
        "state": "US-OH",
        "countryCode": "US"
      }
    },
    "customer": {
      "firstName": "John",
      "lastName": "Johnson",
      "customerId": "43424",
      "email": "john@example.com"
    }
  }
}

Parameters

transactionReferencestring, [ 1 .. 64 ] characters^[a-zA-Z0-9\-_/!@#$%()*=.:;?\[\]{}~+]*$required

For Bizum transactions, please follow this extra regex [a-zA-Z0-9]{4,12}

orderReferencestring, [ 1 .. 64 ] characters^[a-zA-Z0-9\-_/!@#$%()*=.:;?\[\]{}~+]*$

A reference that you can apply to one or more payments according to your business needs. You may reuse the same reference across multiple payments, for example where:

the total amount for a single order is split across multiple payments
you use a single reference for each payment in a recurring agreement or split shipment scenario

merchantobject(MerchantV2)required

instructionobject(InstructionV2)required

Response

Example response

{
  "paymentInstrument": {
    "method": "ach",
    "type": "direct"
  },
  "paymentId": "eyJrIjoiYXBtLXNlcnZpY2UtZGVmYXVsdCIsImxpbmtWZXJzaW9uIjoiNi4wLjAifQ==.BnnxxcMle38OazhwbF8J+4rtJi8CAq:Y3zUOn1dw6VWfvx:PHL5L0S+5ara5vz6ouV5yBmVUQCiSwQjs+1x5qJIJxAKWMWc2Mlb1doricEYlzsZIRIGCflvnYu1Ns8g1S0+66n6wCELiB9OHfX7cdDZM8QaH19DiFbmMAchPSTyxQUry+EjhI+4Av0FZgKybTQW8Eq5Lj6LFzcEh8YV9gKLyAJXKJwZGztDqfCZz9C54i7Qm6PznXY+lb8gjX08QbPuM7eN9CDfUDc8S4J3uauHV:lzKfpwhCpCj20XtN:AkTEXfvJEm8PKFuVlX10AbTZIsCMVbuMS1sIqrgbendo:b1Rfx8XquR8u:dBYr5a70wYkewsxOvrYXmLip3FvyJdzRzXf3LyUgHUqZh:ulvr2BwGjsfY6y32HN+osTE4dworCDzhGpsvEwJ:GRwLUNfeKBzVqK6WhJGqM+s8XpCA==",
  "lastEvent": "authorized",
  "_links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://try.access.worldpay.com/apmPayments/eyJrIjoiYXBtLXNlcnZpY2UtZGVmYXVsdCIsImxpbmtWZXJzaW9uIjoiNi4wLjAifQ==.BnnxxcMle38OazhwbF8J+4rtJi8CAq:Y3zUOn1dw6VWfvx:PHL5L0S+5ara5vz6ouV5yBmVUQCiSwQjs+1x5qJIJxAKWMWc2Mlb1doricEYlzsZIRIGCflvnYu1Ns8g1S0+66n6wCELiB9OHfX7cdDZM8QaH19DiFbmMAchPSTyxQUry+EjhI+4Av0FZgKybTQW8Eq5Lj6LFzcEh8YV9gKLyAJXKJwZGztDqfCZz9C54i7Qm6PznXY+lb8gjX08QbPuM7eN9CDfUDc8S4J3uauHV:lzKfpwhCpCj20XtN:AkTEXfvJEm8PKFuVlX10AbTZIsCMVbuMS1sIqrgbendo:b1Rfx8XquR8u:dBYr5a70wYkewsxOvrYXmLip3FvyJdzRzXf3LyUgHUqZh:ulvr2BwGjsfY6y32HN+osTE4dworCDzhGpsvEwJ:GRwLUNfeKBzVqK6WhJGqM+s8XpCA=="
    }
  },
  "_actions": {},
  "redirect": "",
  "commandId": "cmdSQBwMoFu3i2bNWmLGZLid0"
}

Schema

paymentIdstring

The identifier of the payment resource.

lastEventstring

Enum:"authorized""cancelFailed""cancelled""cancelRequested""sentForSettlement""sentForAuthorization""settlementFailed""chargebackReversed""chargedBack""disputeExpired"

_linksobject(Links)

Links to resources related to the request.

_actionsobject(ActionsV2)

redirectstring

The URL to redirect your customer to, or a QR code in Base64 to show to your customer, in order to complete the transaction.

commandIdstring

An action ID generated by us, identifying a single merchant interaction.

Example:"cmdYNdIHBPJwbkjLiykzTx0"

paymentInstrumentAll others (object) or PayPal (object) or SEPA DD (object) or Klarna (recurring) token (object)(PaymentInstrument)

One of:

Payment instrument for: ACH, Alipay China, Alipay Hong Kong, Alipay Plus, BANCOMAT Pay, Bancontact, Bizum, BLIK, EFT, Euteller, iDEAL guest, iDEAL recurring, Klarna, Klarna (recurring), Konbini, Multibanco, MyBank, Open Banking, PaysafeCard, Pix, Przelewy24, SafetyPay, Satispay, Swish, Trustly, China UnionPay, WeChat Pay.

transactionCodestring

For Pix payments - display to your customer for them to copy and paste in the Pix app.

For Swish payments - use this value as the {token} in the custom URL scheme: swish://paymentrequest?token={token}&callbackurl={callbackURL}. This will prompt the app to open, allowing your customer to complete their payment.

Example:"IZQ3iUfePwiWiwldJlipl8NGVA7w5IUg"

Errors

Check out our API reference for more responses or error codes.

Next steps

Manage your ACH/eCheck payment.