ACH Debit Collection payout process
The ACH Debit Collection
amount is the aggregate of all successful payments for that day. Collection amounts can be reconciled via the dashboard and API.
These amounts are paid out to you from the sponsor bank.
Direct credit via sponsor bank ICICI Bank
You receive direct credit of funds from ICICI Bank, either via internal funds transfer (creditor bank account ICICI Bank) or via NEFT (creditor bank account all other banks). This process is advised by LotusPay, but LotusPay does not handle your funds.
When you receive the funds depends on when the ACH Debit Final Cycle response process is completed by NPCI, ICICI Bank and LotusPay.
If completed by the regular time of 9pm, you will receive funds by ~10pm (creditor bank account ICICI Bank) or the next working day by ~8am (creditor bank account all other banks).
If delayed, you would receive funds the next working day, usually by 1pm.
Working day means Monday to Friday, and the first, third and fifth Saturday of each each calendar month, excluding national bank holidays, and state bank holidays in Maharashtra. Note that second and fourth Saturdays and all Sundays are not working days.
Currently ICICI Bank NACH Operations desk does not provide LotusPay with the UTR, as the payouts are a manual activity for them and their payments portal gives them an internal reference number only.
Direct credit from all other sponsor banks
You receive direct credit of funds from your sponsor bank as per your arrangement with them. LotusPay is not involved in the payout of your funds to you. Any queries should be addressed to your sponsor bank.
Reconciliation
You can start by matching the expected payout with the actual payout.
Expected payout is the ACH Debit Collection.
Payer: the sponsor bank's name e.g. ICICI Bank
Narration: NACH Debit or ACH Debit
Amount: The amount of the ACH Debit Collection e.g. Rs 21,90,113.03
Date: The value date of the ACH Debit Collection, or the next business day e.g. 5 March 2023 or 6 March 2023
Actual payout is the amount that arrives in your bank account, and it should match with the expected payout in all respects (payer, narration, amount, date).
Automating Reconciliation
If you want to automate this reconciliation:
(a) You can write code to fetch ACH Debit Collection details from the LotusPay API (or receive via webhook). If funds are going to your partner's bank account, you can push the ACH Debit Collection data to your partner via your integration with them.
(b) You can write code to parse the bank statement or use the bank's APIs to do this. If the funds are going to your partner's bank account, you can ask them to do this, or you can ask them to push relevant transaction details to you via your integration with them.
(a) and (b) will match by date and amount. This will surely give a unique match in the bank statement. In this way you can automate the process using a combination of bank statement parsing/API and the LotusPay API.
Settlement credit (terminated on 30 September 2021)
Note: LotusPay no longer handles client funds. The information below is only for reference.
If LotusPay is the initial creditor of your collected funds, we normally pay out settlements on a T+1 basis i.e. the next working day after the charge date. This payout is called a 'Settlement'.
LotusPay aggregates all your collected payments for any given day and pays out a single settlement amount to you.
Settlement amounts can be reconciled via the dashboard and API.
In some cases we may pay out settlements earlier. Then the timings would follow this pattern:
If you are banking with the same bank as us, you would receive the funds on the same day i.e. the charge date.
If you are banking with a different bank, for settlement amounts less than Rs 2 lakhs, you receive funds the same day.
If you are banking with a different bank, for settlement amounts greater than Rs 2 lakhs, you receive the funds the next RTGS working day
in the morning. RTGS working days include Monday to Friday, first, third and fifth Saturdays of each calendar month, and exclude national holidays and some other holidays as determined by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).