Managing Bank Account Change Requests

Owned by Miles Graves
Last updated: Jul 10, 2024
15 min read

Change Requests are vital to managing and updating your account information within the Payrix Portal. The term “Change Requests” refers to an entity adding or updating their bank account information. This entity must submit relevant documentation to support the validity of its new bank account information.

This guide will provide an overview of Change Requests, their importance, and how they impact different user levels.

For Referrers & Merchants

Referrers and Merchants often need to make changes to their bank account information. The Change Request process allows added or changed account information to be submitted with documentation to support the change during risk analysis.

Referrers & Merchants can:

Note: Referrers can submit Change Requests on behalf of Merchants. This includes:

  1. Updating bank account information from the Banking tab of the Merchant’s Profile page.

  2. While logged in as the Merchant, update bank account information from the Banking tab of the Merchant’s Portal Account Profile.

  3. Submitting an API call to the /changeRequests endpoint associated with the Merchant’s Login ID.

For Facilitators

Facilitators play a crucial role in handling change requests. Since Facilitators take on the responsibility of managing and mitigating their own risk, the Change Request management process provides full visibility of changes happening to bank accounts within their portfolio, to prevent risk hazards, such as money laundering, due to unverified or unauthorized bank accounts being added without notification.

Facilitators can:

Front End User Interface for Facilitators & Referrers

We recommend that Facilitators and Referrers with whitelabeled Portals and custom sites take additional steps to map and configure their front-end user interface (UI) to maximize user (Merchant) transparency and minimize communication times. Read more about these specific tips below:

We recommend Facilitators that use the Change Requests workflow above with an API integration to incorporate the following into your front-end user interface development:

Display Change Request Messages

  • When you submit or receive a Change Request using our API, consider incorporating a user-friendly notification system on your front-end interface.

  • This system can display the important messages related to that user’s change, such as Change Request Creation, Approval, or Decline status update notifications. These messages help users understand the progress of their Change Request(s) and stay informed about potential required actions.

Real-Time Status Updates

  • Implement real-time status updates within your UI to enhance transparency and user confidence. When Change Requests undergo status changes, whether pending, approved, or declined, promptly reflect these updates in your front-end interface.

  • This allows your users to track the progress of their Change Request without manually checking or calling your API.

Communicate Decline Reasons

  • When Change Requests are declined, ensure that the reason and reason type are communicated to your users. Design UI elements that can display the Reason Type and Reason in a user-friendly manner.

  • This provides transparency and empowers the users to take corrective actions if needed.

Tip: We recommend you configure Web Alerts and Email Alerts to pass “Declined”, “Approved”, or “Pending Review” Change Request statuses to your front-end interface for whitelabeled end-user communication.

Prevent Funding to an Existing Bank Account

To prevent funds from being sent to an existing account while the change request is being reviewed and approved, either as an optional feature for merchants to choose when submitting the bank change or as the default process for your software

Reasons that a Referrer or Facilitator may want to prevent funds from being disbursed to or withdrawn from a Merchant’s existing bank account include but are not limited to:

  • The Merchant’s bank account has been closed by their bank due to reported fraudulent activity.

  • The Merchant’s bank account was closed by the merchant before the change request being approved.

  • The Merchant added incorrect bank account information by mistake that they do not want to use.

Request URL & Headers

PUT /accounts/{id} HTTP/1.1 Accept: application/json Content-Type: application/json Host: api-test.payrix.com APIKEY: {private_api_key}

Path Parameter

{id} - The account ID for the bank account you want to deactivate.

The following example changes the bank account's status parameter from 3 - [Fully] Verified to 1 - Ready [for verification] to remove the verification required to fund a bank account. In addition, you can optionally choose to change the inactive parameter to 1 - Inactive to also achieve a similar result.

Note: All other previous bank account information will remain the same in the request body. If you are unsure about the information of an existing account, you can make an API call to GET /accounts/{id} endpoint using the same path parameter to return the needed information in the response.

{ "id": "p1_act_5a1ef5e55656698eefaf8b6,", "name": "TD Bank" "primary": "0", "type": "all", "reserved": "0", "inactive": "1", "frozen": "0", "status": "1", }

 

Change Request Management Flow

See the flowchart below for a visual understanding of the Change Request Management process flow:

Submit a Change Request

As a Referrer or Merchant, there are instances where you may need to update your bank account information or add a new bank account.

The processes outlined below will outline how to submit a Change Request to update your or your Merchant’s bank account information.

Using the Portal

Submitting a change request using the Portal can be completed in a few simple steps along with easy upload of the supporting documents in a single process:

While Merchants can submit their Change Requests, Referrers have the unique ability to log in as the Merchant and submit Change Requests on behalf of a Merchant.

Submit a Change Request for bank account information by following the steps below:

Step 1: Navigate to the Banking tab and click the ADD NEW ACCOUNT button using one of the Portal pages below:

  • Your primary Referrer or Merchant Portal Account Profile page (located on the Dashboard), or;

  • Your desired Merchant’s profile page.

Step 2: If Plaid is unavailable for any reason, click ADD ACCOUNT MANUALLY. This will display the message below. Then, click Continue.

Step 3: Upload any supporting document(s) and click Save.

Step 4: Once the change is made the Merchant or Referrer is provided the below message. Click Done to finish submitting the Change Request.

Using the API

Submitting a Change Request using the API is a multi-part process. Follow each expandable step below for each applicable step to submit a change request for a bank account with supporting documentation:

Visit our API Documentation for parameter descriptions and valid values.

Request URL & Headers

POST /accounts HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: application/json Host: api-test.payrix.com APIKEY:{{private_api_key}}

Example Request Body

Example Response

Create a Note Resource to Associate with an Entity and Documents - Example Code Snippet

Visit our API Documentation for parameter descriptions and valid values.

Request URL & Header

Example Request Body

Example Response

 

After submitting your Change Request, risk analysts from the Payrix platform (or your associated platform Facilitator) will conduct a review of the submitted account information and supporting documentation.

This submission will be Approved, meaning a manual review was conducted and the information submitted was validated and accepted; or Declined, followed by:

  • a note added to the Referrer or Merchant account, and;

  • an email to the user that submitted the Change Request with more detail explaining the review result and reason.

Decline Responses

When a submission is Declined, a reason and accompanying note will be added to your entity account by the reviewer. Declines can occur for one of the following reasons:

Decline Reason

Description

Decline Reason

Description

Unable to validate

The information provided doesn't allow risk analysts to validate your information.

No Response

Analysts have followed up with additional questions and received no response.

Invalid Document

The document provided for review was not sufficient.

Unable to read

The document provided was unreadable.

Expired Document

The document provided has expired.

Other

Custom reason, filled out by reviewing Risk Analyst as needed.

View Your Pending Change Requests

As a Referrer or Merchant, we understand that having a validated and ready-to-use bank account is critical to the operations of any business.

When submitting a Change Request for your existing bank account (or adding a new bank account), the waiting period can take up to 5 business days.

To provide clarity into the risk analysis process, we’ve introduced the Pending Change Requests queue to make sure you’re constantly informed about the status of your Change Request.

View Your Change Request History

As a Referrer or Merchant, there may be scenarios where validating previously submitted Change Requests may be helpful for auditing purposes.

The processes outlined below will demonstrate how to view or retrieve information about your previous Change Requests:

Enable the Change Management Queue

As a Facilitator, enabling (or disabling) Referrers' and Merchants' ability to submit Change Requests using this workflow is important for testing and troubleshooting.

The processes outlined below demonstrate how to enable the Change Request queue and API functionality from the Partition level (your entire portfolio) or Division Level (manually grouped sets of entities):

Viewing Your Change Requests Queue

As a Facilitator, seeing high-level data about Change Requests submitted by business (entity) owners in your portfolio is crucial to observing and quickly responding the those requests. We’ve compiled all past and current Change Requests into an independent tab on the Risk Management page.

The Change Request Queue will allow you to filter through requests, quickly respond after risk review, and sort based on date to ensure you’re responding in the order of requests received.

The process below will outline how to access the Change Requests Queue in the Portal:

  1. Navigate to the Risk Management page.

  2. Click Change Requests in the page tabs (located directly below the “Risk Management” page title).

API-based users looking to retrieve a list of all Change Requests under their Partition or Division should make the following call:

Respond to a Change Request (Approve or Decline)

As a Facilitator, you’ll need to respond to Change Requests that appear in your queue to keep your Merchants running smoothly. This can be done easily by using the Change Requests Queue in the Portal or updating a resource on the API server. First, you’ll need to evaluate the submitted documentation for risk review, and then you can respond to the Change Request.

Test Bank Account Change Requests in the Sandbox Environment

Using the following bank account information, you can submit a manual change request that will be treated as a sandbox test when submitted in the Sandbox environment.

The routing numbers provided below will generate a specific automated risk decision for each type of Change Request result to help you better understand the process.

US-Based Entity Routing Number

Canada-Based Entity Routing Number

Change Request Decision Result

US-Based Entity Routing Number

Canada-Based Entity Routing Number

Change Request Decision Result

061000227

021000021

Approved

061092387

000281349

Manual Review

067014822

071025661

Declined

 

 

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