ACH custom payment pages (standard)

The following is a guide to building custom payment pages for merchants using GoCardless Advanced or GoCardless Pro and for partners, using the add-on feature Custom Checkout Experience. See our Pricing page for more details. If you’re interested in further recommendations to optimize your pages, you can follow our advanced guide which can be found here.

Consumers in the US need to complete an ACH Debit Authorization (also known as a Consumer Authorization) to authorize merchants to take payments from them via ACH, the local Direct Debit payment scheme. Consumers use payment pages to complete authorizations online.

Merchants using GoCardless Advanced or GoCardless Pro have the option to use GoCardless’ own payment pages, or to build their own custom payment pages by using our Custom Checkout Experience. 

Partners can opt to build and use custom payment pages as well. This will enable merchants who are using GoCardless through their app to offer their customers (consumers) a consistent branding experience.

Please note: Before building custom payment pages, you should be aware that there are compliance requirements for the content and formatting of these pages. Once ready, custom payment pages have to receive a sign off by GoCardless, and you could be asked to remove or amend any part of the signed off pages at any time if notified to do so.

How to build custom payment pages

This guidance is split into 5 sections which will help you to ensure compliance with the ACH scheme rules and GoCardless’ processes:

1. Compulsory requirements

2. Recommended features

3. Additional steps for Partners

4. GoCardless’ approval process

5. Summary table

1. Compulsory requirements

The steps outlined below (sections 1A - 1C) are compulsory requirements of the ACH scheme and GoCardless’ processes, which must be met in order for your custom payment pages to be compliant. 

A. HTTPS hosted payment pages

To ensure consumers’ details are safely transmitted, your website must be configured to only accept secure (SSL - minimum of SHA-256 SSL support TLS.1 or TLS1.2) connections.

B. Information entry page

This is the sign-up page for your product / services, and is used to capture the consumer information which is necessary to set up an ACH Debit Authorization.

There are 4 compulsory elements to this page:

C. Summary and confirmation page

This page enables payors to view and verify the details, that you captured in the information entry page, before submitting them and consenting to the ACH Debit Authorization. 

There are 4 compulsory elements to this page:

2. Recommended features

Sections 2D and 2E listed below are recommended features for your custom payment pages. These are in addition to the steps outlined in the Compulsory Requirements section, and we strongly recommend using these. 

D. Summary and confirmation page

As explained above, this page enables payors to view and verify the details that you captured in the information entry page. In addition to the compulsory requirements in section 1C,  it is best practice, although not a scheme requirement, to include the below:

i. Page heading that is identifiable to consumers. We recommend” ‘We need your consent to set up this ACH Debit Authorization’ or ‘Check your details are correct’ or ‘Confirm your details’.

ii. Include an ‘edit’ button, allowing consumers to amend any incorrect information.

E. Setup success page

After the consumer has provided their consent, this page confirms to the payor that the ACH Debit Authorization has been successfully set up. It is best practice, although not a scheme requirement, to include the below:

i. Page heading that is identifiable to consumers, i.e., message to confirm ACH Debit Authorization setup. We recommend: ‘ACH Debit Authorization set up successfully’.

ii. Reminder of what consumers will see on their bank statements. We recommend: ‘Payment(s) will be debited from your bank account ******[last two digits of account number] ([checking or savings account]) and will appear on your bank statement as: [insert reference number].’

3. Additional steps for partners 

Partners must also meet the steps outlined above (sections 1-2), and can use the creditors endpoint to retrieve the relevant merchant information (such as merchant name, email address etc.) required for this. 

4. GoCardless’ approval process

Your payment pages must be sent to GoCardless for approval prior to your go-live date. Only once you have written approval from GoCardless, may you implement the payment pages. More information can be found below and here.

Merchants: 

You must submit your payment pages to GoCardless through our Support Centre.

To test your payment pages, you can sign up here for a sandbox account. You should create an access token with read-write access, and use the access token to link your sandbox account with your internal system. Test the mandate creation process, as outlined in the developer documentation here.

To move your integration from the testing to a live environment, simply rotate your access token from your sandbox to your production GoCardless account.

Partners:

When creating a new partner app and going through our technical certification process, you must submit your payment pages to GoCardless for approval through our Partner Portal.

5. Summary table

The below shows a summary of the relevant information that you should capture or display at each stage of your payment pages.