I am interested in taking advantage of your Mass Payments API endpoint in order to cut down on ACH fees charged by our bank and have some questions.
Question 1: I have tested this endpoint in the sandbox environment and see that when I create one mass payment with two items, there are three “transactions” are listed on transactions dashboard when the mass payment that I made had only two items (a $10 item and $20 item). Could you please help me understand what exactly is happening behind the scenes when a mass payment is made? How does the flow of funds differ if at all from the single transfer process? What is the third $30 transaction?
Question 2: Building off of Q1, how will this impact the transfer fees that Dwolla charges? For example, previously, if I made two bank to bank transfers, Dwolla charges for four transfers (two for each). In the above example where I make two bank to bank transfers in one single mass payment, how many transfers will Dwolla charge for? I would hope that it is one from source bank to wallet ($30) and then two more total from wallet to destination ($10 and $20) totally three. Am I correct?
Hi @JoeS, I can help answer this question. The $30 transaction you are seeing is the Debit from your bank account. The rest correspond to the number of items in your masspayment – i.e. the credits out to the Customers.
Question 2: Building off of Q1, how will this impact the transfer fees that Dwolla charges? For example, previously, if I made two bank to bank transfers, Dwolla charges for four transfers (two for each). In the above example where I make two bank to bank transfers in one single mass payment, how many transfers will Dwolla charge for? I would hope that it is one from source bank to wallet ($30) and then two more total from wallet to destination ($10 and $20) totally three. Am I correct?
For this question, I’d ask you to reach out to our support team at support@dwolla.com as they will be able to help you out better!
For Q1, can you please confirm my following understanding is correct?
Scenario 1: Two individual transfers are made from bank to bank.
In this scenario, there will be two transfers from the funding source bank that transfer to a wallet within the dwolla network, and then there will be two more transfers from the wallet out to the receiving bank accounts. (4 total billable transfers)
Scenario 2: A mass payment is created with two bank-to-bank items.
In this scenario, there will be only one transfer from the funding source bank that transfer to a wallet within the dwolla network, and then there will be two more transfers from the wallet out to the receiving bank accounts. (3 total billable transfers)
My confusion is coming from how these are labeled on the Dwolla transactions dashboard as in scenario 2, both of the items are still labeled as bank to bank despite there also being the $30 bank to wallet transfer. Are these just mislabeled or am I missing something?
Regarding Q2, support@dwolla.com told me to direct these questions here instead but I think better understanding Q1 will help me assume the answer to Q2.
cc: @spencer (I really appreciate you for taking a look at this as well, Spencer. I remember you being very helpful with in depth technical questions in the past)
spencer
(Spencer Hunter - Lead Developer Advocate @ Dwolla)
4
@JoeS , In this scenario it sounds like there are two different end-users/Customers that can hold a wallet in the Dwolla network (aka Verified Customers). Therefore, funds would pass through each end-user’s wallet before landing in a receiving bank account.
Verified Customer A bank → Verified Customer A balance
Verified Customer A balance → Verified Customer B balance
Verified Customer B balance → Verified Customer B bank
Transfer #1 (above) would be the ACH debit into Dwolla and Transfer #3 would be the ACH credit out of Dwolla. I believe you’d only incur a billable transfer on ACH transfers and not within network.
Your understanding of the flow of funds is correct. One ACH debit for the total sum of the transfers out to the receiving accounts. Once the ACH debit completes to the balance, the mass payment will create unique transfers for the ACH credits (pushing funds to receiving banks).
Regarding the Dashboard transaction view, without knowing where you’re specifically looking, I’m assuming that we’re excluding certain transfers in the dashboard from being displayed. They’re likely displayed within a flyout pane.
Hope this information helps, please let me know if I can clarify anything further!