Bank payments: how long they take, and when one fails

On a dock bill, a bank payment costs you a fraction of what a card does, which is why LakeOps Payments offers it first. The trade is time: a card is confirmed in seconds, and a bank debit takes days. Here is what happens in those days, and what happens when one comes back.

Which bank payment your customers see

Your account	Bank payment offered	Usual time to confirm
United States	ACH direct debit from a US bank account	About 4 business days
Canada	Pre-authorized debit (PAD) from a Canadian bank account	Up to 7 business days

The customer picks bank or card on Stripe’s payment page. A Canadian customer paying by PAD agrees to a debit authorization on that page, which Stripe collects; there is nothing for you to file.

While it clears

From the moment the customer presses Pay, LakeOps treats the money as on its way — not collected, and not owed either:

• The customer’s page says their bank payment is on its way, and shows no pay button for that amount.
• No reminder asks for it, and no late fee is charged on it.
• A pay-link text is not sent for it.
• The job still counts as unpaid on your balances report, because a bank debit can still fail.

When the bank confirms, the payment settles, the job’s balance drops, and the customer is emailed a receipt — dated the day the money cleared, not the day they pressed Pay.

When it fails

A debit can come back days later: not enough in the account, a closed account, or the customer stopped it with their bank. When Stripe reports that:

1. The payment is marked failed, and the job owes the amount again.
2. The customer gets one email, in your company’s name: your bank payment did not go through. It gives the amount, what is still owing, and a link to pay another way. If you are no longer taking payments through LakeOps by then, it tells them to contact you instead.
3. The failure appears on the job’s activity.

From then on it is ordinary money owed. Reminders and late fees, if you use them, pick it up on their normal schedule. The customer is never debited again automatically — they choose how to pay next.

What it means for payouts

A bank payment can be paid out to you only once it has confirmed, so a week of bank payments lands in your bank later than a week of cards. Money that comes back after it was paid out to you — a customer disputing a debit with their bank weeks later, for example — is taken from your Stripe balance, and so from a later payout. See payouts.

Cards on file are cards only

A customer can keep a card on file for automatic charges, but not a bank account. Charging a bank account with nobody present has its own rules, and a saved method LakeOps could not actually charge would be worse than none.