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less than a minute read • Updated 6 minutes ago

Vantiv ACH

Connect Foxy to Vantiv ACH for secure payments.

Countries

United States

Vantiv ACH takes payment directly from a customer's US bank account over the ACH network, using Vantiv's eCheck service. It is the ACH counterpart to Foxy's Vantiv card gateway and shares the same account, the same credentials and the same setup prerequisites.

Supported country: United States.

Vantiv is now part of Worldpay, and the platform Foxy integrates with is the card-not-present XML API previously sold as Litle & Co and then Vantiv. Specifically, Foxy submits echeckSale requests against version 9.13 of that API. If your account documentation refers to cnpAPI or to a Customer Experience Manager (CEM), you are on the right platform. Vantiv's technical documentation now lives under Worldpay's support site.

Setting up Vantiv ACH

1. Have Vantiv configure your account

Vantiv will not accept transactions from Foxy until your account is configured to permit it, and eCheck has to be switched on separately from card processing.

  1. 1

    Contact your CEM at Vantiv and ask them to configure your account so that Foxy is permitted to submit transactions on your behalf.

  2. 2

    Ask them to confirm your account accepts cnpAPI version 9.13, which is the version Foxy submits against.

  3. 3

    Confirm that eCheck is enabled on your account. Card processing being active does not mean eCheck is — it is a separate service and is underwritten separately.

If you are a brand new Vantiv customer, raise all three points during implementation with that team rather than afterwards. If you hit errors, your Vantiv contact is the person who can see and change these settings; Foxy cannot.

2. Get your credentials

You need three values from Vantiv:

  • your API User name

  • the matching Password

  • your Merchant Id

These are the same credentials used for the Vantiv card gateway — in Vantiv's API they are the user and password on the request and the merchantId on the batch. If you already have Vantiv card processing connected to Foxy, they are the same three values you entered there.

3. Add the payment method in Foxy

  1. 1

    Go to the Foxy admin and open Settings > Payments.

  2. 2

    Open or create a payment method set. If you only have one, it will be the Default Payment Method Set.

  3. 3

    Click Add payment method + and choose Vantiv ACH.

  4. 4

    Under Live setup, enter your User, Password and Merchant Id. This setup only takes effect once Use live credentials is turned on for the payment method set.

  5. 5

    Click Create — or Save, if you are editing an existing entry.

Vantiv ACH is added alongside your card payment method, not instead of it. A payment method set can hold both Vantiv and Vantiv ACH, and customers pick between card and bank account at checkout.

The panel is split into a Live setup block and a Test setup block carrying the same three fields. (The Live heading reads "Live setup (inactive)" while the set has Use live credentials switched off — that is the current state of the set, not a different set of fields.)

What the customer fills in at checkout

Vantiv ACH collects the least of any ACH gateway on Foxy. Just two values, plus a checkbox:

  • Routing number — Notes: The nine-digit ABA routing number of the customer's bank.

  • Account number — Notes: The bank account number.

  • Account-ownership checkbox — Notes: See below.

Two things this gateway does not collect, which the others do:

  • No name on account. Unlike every other ACH gateway on Foxy, Vantiv ACH does not ask for the name on the bank account. The billing name from the checkout is what Vantiv receives.

  • No account type — and no savings-account support. There is no checking/savings selector, and Foxy submits every Vantiv ACH transaction to Vantiv as a checking account. If your customer pays from a savings account, it will still be submitted as checking. There is no setting that changes this. If savings-account support matters to you, Vantiv ACH is the wrong gateway; ACH.com is the only one on Foxy that supports it.

The checkout also shows a checkbox the customer has to tick, reading "I represent that I am the owner and/or authorized signer on the checking account above". The checkout will not submit without it, and there is no setting to turn it off. ACH is a pull from someone's bank account, and NACHA — the body that governs the ACH network — expects the account holder to have authorised the debit. See ACH payments on Foxy for more.

Testing

Foxy provides shared test credentials for Vantiv ACH, so you can run test transactions without setting up your own sandbox account. Leave the Test setup fields as they are.

Those shared credentials exercise the integration only. If you need to test against your own account configuration — your own account configuration, your own eCheck setup — get test credentials from Vantiv and enter them in the Test setup block. Vantiv's support line for account and testing questions is 1-800-548-5326, option 3.

As with every ACH gateway on Foxy, you can confirm that the checkout accepts bank details and that the gateway accepts the submission, but you cannot rehearse settlement or a return. Foxy is not told the outcome in production either, so plan your reconciliation process before your first live ACH order.

There are no test card numbers for this gateway — it does not touch cards at all. Any Vantiv test card numbers you have been given are for card transactions and will not work here.

Advanced features

  • No 3-D Secure, no client-side JavaScript. ACH has no equivalent of card authentication, and this gateway needs no SDK or JavaScript on your checkout. It is a plain server-side integration: nothing to load, nothing to style, nothing extra to configure in your checkout template.

  • No card verification, no AVS, no CSC. There is no card, so none of these apply.

  • USD only. The gateway does not support multi-currency.

  • The "Authorize only (no capture)" toggle does nothing here. The setting is present on this payment method, and it looks and behaves like the same control on a card gateway, but turning it on has no effect: Vantiv ACH always submits an immediate debit. If you are relying on it to authorize now and capture later, it will not do that — see the note below.

Important notes and caveats

  • The "Authorize only (no capture)" toggle is inert. Turning it on does not change how Vantiv ACH behaves — every transaction is submitted as an immediate debit either way. If you need an authorize-then-capture flow on ACH, Authorize.net ACH is the one gateway on Foxy where that toggle actually works.

  • Transactions stay pending forever. Covered above and in ACH payments on Foxy. If you have a datafeed, the status node on an ACH transaction will read pending and no further datafeed will arrive to change it. Do not write fulfilment logic that waits for approved on an ACH order.

  • ACH is slow and reversible. Settlement takes several days, and a debit can be returned after the fact for insufficient funds, a closed account or a customer dispute. Decide deliberately whether you are willing to fulfil against an unsettled ACH payment.

  • Account configuration and API version are the two things that break Vantiv setups. Confirm both with your Vantiv contact before you go looking for anything else.

  • Savings accounts are submitted as checking. Covered above. Worth deciding whether that is acceptable for your customers before you go live.

  • You cannot refund or void a Vantiv ACH transaction through Foxy. Refunds and voids are not implemented for this gateway: an attempt fails inside Foxy and returns a message to the effect that the gateway is not configured for that action. Nothing is sent to Vantiv. Returning money to a customer who paid by ACH happens in your Vantiv/Worldpay tooling or through your bank, and you record it in your own systems. Plan for this before your first live ACH order.

Troubleshooting

"System Error - Call Vantiv" on live transactions. This is the classic Vantiv setup error and it almost always means an account-configuration problem on Vantiv's side: either your account is not configured to accept transactions submitted by Foxy, or it is not set up for the API version Foxy uses. Contact Vantiv support to confirm both.

Every ACH transaction fails while card transactions work. Check that eCheck is actually enabled on your Vantiv account. Working card credentials do not imply eCheck is switched on.

Credentials rejected. Confirm the User, Password and Merchant Id are in the section matching the mode you are running in — Live setup if the payment method set has Use live credentials on, Test setup if it does not.

A transaction shows as pending days later. That is expected and permanent. See above.

"This gateway is not configured for this action" when refunding. Expected. Foxy has no refund or void path for Vantiv ACH. Handle it at Vantiv instead.

"I turned on 'Authorize only (no capture)' but the debit still happened immediately." Expected. The toggle has no effect on Vantiv ACH — every transaction is an immediate debit regardless of the setting. Authorize.net ACH is the only ACH gateway on Foxy where this toggle actually changes behavior.

Anything about a specific transaction's fate — settled, returned, held — has to come from Vantiv or your bank. Foxy does not have that information. Vantiv support: 1-800-548-5326, option 3.

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