Payment Processing FAQs

A payment descriptor (sometimes also called a statement or billing descriptor) is the short line of text that appears on your customers’ statements to identify a transaction with your business.

For debit or credit cards, the payment descriptor your customers or residents will see on their card statements is “RF ” followed by the Doing Business As (DBA) name you supplied on your onboarding form. Please note that only the first 16 characters (including spaces) of your DBA name will be shown on the billing descriptor. For example, if the DBA name is “Jefferson City Recreation Center”, then the payment descriptor on your customers’ card statement will show up as “RF Jefferson City R”. In addition to the descriptor, your customer’s bank may also show the city and state, phone number, or website.

For ACH payments (bank transfers), the payment descriptor your customers or residents will see on their bank statements is structured as follows: DBA Name followed by 8 alphanumeric characters (reference number established by our platform) and ends with a “-p” or “-r” (p is used for payment made by your customers and r is used for any refunds debited from your account). For example, if the DBA Name is “Jefferson City Recreation Center”, then the payment descriptor on your customer’ bank statement will show up as either “Jefferson City Recreation Center UxhzthhT-p” or “Jefferson City Recreation Center xGAqbrS9-r”.

Contact our Payments Support team.

Please reference your CivicPlus contract, where processing fees are documented.

Fees are assessed on each transaction and netted from each deposit. For example, if you process a $100 transaction at a 5% processing rate, you will receive $95 on your next deposit.

Just like a credit card transaction, ACH transactions can be declined. When an ACH is declined, it’s called a return. An ACH return is most often initiated by the user's bank and can be divided into two categories:

• Administrative Returns

• Disputes

Administrative returns typically result from errors in the submitted payment information or issues with the account that cannot be resolved. For instance, combinations of routing and account numbers that are incorrect should not be resubmitted. Some administrative returns can be resubmitted, like insufficient funds, because nothing was incorrect about the details, there just weren't funds at the time of the debit.

Disputes are ACH payins that are determined to be invalid or unauthorized by the user. These are similar to a card chargeback, but unlike a chargeback, ACH disputes can not be challenged and are final. Because these are final, disputed routing and account number combinations should not be re-attempted.

Most Common ACH Return Codes

Most Common ACH Dispute Codes

Some banks require you to manually whitelist an ACH ID to allow ACH debits from your account, which are sometimes used to withdraw refund amounts, collect payment processing fees, or reverse incorrect deposits (in rare cases). If ACH debits are being blocked, you may receive a notification from us or your bank indicating a “Return Code R29 - Corporate Customer Advises Not Authorized” or similar message. Please contact our Payments Support team, and they will be happy to assist in resolving the issue.

We leverage a third-party payment provider to securely collect sensitive data and to keep our network out of PCI scope when processing your transactions. Our provider is held to the highest standard of security and is annually audited under SOC2 and PCI DSS programs for compliance.

This functionality is not available.

Yes! Your customers can pay with international credit cards on our platform. Your international customers may be asked to enter a postal code during checkout. Even though the postal code is a requirement, your international customers may enter any alphanumeric value, up to 15 characters, which will not be validated by our system. Please note that U.S. customers still need to enter a valid 5-digit zip / postal code associated with their credit card.

Our batch cutoff time depends on the payment type:

Transactions captured before this time are included in the same-day settlement batch. Transactions processed after this time roll into the next day’s batch.

Deposits are created on each United States banking day for every merchant with payment volume that has been released. Card transactions are deposited into your bank account on the following business day (T+1), while ACH transactions are deposited four business days following the transactions (T+4).

Additionally, ACH transactions are not processed over weekends or banking holidays, which means the Transaction Date (“T”) does not equal the date of the purchase for transactions initiated on a Saturday, Sunday, or banking holiday.

Take a look at some transaction examples and their associated deposit date below.

Card Transactions (T+1) | 11:00 PM Eastern Time Cutoff

ACH Transactions (T+4) | 9:00 PM Eastern Time Cutoff

When your funds are deposited into your bank account, the payout will appear on your bank statement with a descriptor that helps you recognize it came from our platform. The exact descriptor will have the following structure: “CivicPlus” followed by 8 alphanumeric values (reference number established by our platform) and “-d” (for deposit). For example, you may see “CivicPlus g8CSfJeD-d” as the descriptor.

If you’ve noticed a delay in your deposit, there are a few things that could impact the timing. First, double-check the timing of your deposit; ACH can take up to 5 days to deposit into your account. If the timing is correct, and you’ve confirmed that the expected deposit hasn’t been offset by refunds or chargebacks, please contact our Support team.