Verify bank accounts with microdeposits (Portal)

Microdeposit verification is a fallback method for confirming bank account ownership. If Payabli’s automated verification can’t confirm a vendor or customer’s account instantly, Payabli sends small deposits ($0.01–$0.20) to the account. The account holder confirms the amounts to verify ownership.

Payabli runs the automated check when a bank account is added to a vendor or customer record. Microdeposit verification only starts when that check can’t confirm ownership on its own.

None of Payabli’s default roles include access to the Bank Account Verification Log or its actions. Configuring microdeposit settings requires only the Admin role — see Configure microdeposit settings. Viewing the log, initiating a microdeposit, and resending the verification email all require a custom role, which Payabli can provision as part of feature configuration.

In the Payabli Portal, you can track fallback verifications at Pay Ops > Risk Center > Bank Account Verification Log, available at both the organization and paypoint level.

Configure microdeposit settings

You can define the same three microdeposit settings at both the organization and paypoint levels in the Payabli Portal. Only the Admin role (or a suitable custom role) can save changes — other roles can view the settings but can’t change them.

Organization-level settings

From Settings > Organization Details, you can configure microdeposit behavior for your organization:

• Number of deposits sent to the account: 2–4, default 2.
• Number of attempts the account holder gets to confirm the amounts: 1–5, default 3.
• Expiry (Days): number of days before verification attempts lock: 1–30 days, default 5.

These settings apply to every paypoint in your organization by default. A paypoint automatically inherits the organization-level values unless you override them for that paypoint — see paypoint-level settings.

Paypoint-level settings

You can also configure the same three settings for a specific paypoint, which overrides the organization-level defaults for verifications at that paypoint. To do this, log in with the paypoint as your access point and navigate to Settings > Paypoint Details. The available ranges and defaults are the same as in organization-level settings. Once you save paypoint-level settings, there’s no way to revert to inheriting the organization-level values from the Payabli Portal.

Changes apply only to sets created after you save — verifications already in progress keep their original settings.

Manually manage a verification

Initiating a microdeposit or resending the email requires additional custom-role permissions beyond the read access needed to view the log.

Initiate a microdeposit verification

If you need to manually initiate the verification flow, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Pay Ops > Risk Center > Bank Account Verification Log.
2. Find the account you want to verify.
3. Click the three-dot icon in the account’s row and select Initiate Microdeposit.
4. Enter the account holder’s name.
5. Review the routing number and masked account number shown, and select whether the account is Checking or Savings.
6. Click Initiate Microdeposit.

Payabli sends the configured number of small deposits to the account via standard ACH. This happens regardless of which payout methods your paypoint uses for other transactions. The account holder has the configured number of attempts to confirm the amounts before the set expires.

Resend the verification email

If the account holder didn’t receive the original verification email or lost it:

1. Navigate to Pay Ops > Risk Center > Bank Account Verification Log.
2. Find the account with a pending microdeposit verification.
3. Click the three-dot icon in the account’s row and select Resend verification email. Payabli resends the email immediately — there’s no confirmation dialog or extra prompts.

Account holder confirmation experience

The account holder confirms the deposit amounts from a separate, public-facing page — not the Payabli Portal. They don’t need to login to the Payabli Portal. The verification email links them to a branded page that shows the paypoint’s logo, how many verification attempts remain, and a field for each deposit amount.

To confirm, the account holder enters each deposit amount exactly as it appears on their bank statement. Each amount is between $0.01 and $0.20, and the field accepts cents or dollars — 7 and 0.07 mean the same thing. When the amounts match, the account is verified and the log shows Yes under the Authenticated column.

Microdeposit verification can fail in three ways:

• The deposit set expires before the account holder confirms the amounts.
• The deposit returns over ACH or otherwise doesn’t succeed.
• The account holder exhausts the configured number of confirmation attempts.

In any of these cases, the account holder can no longer confirm the deposit amounts, and the account reverts to unverified. The log’s Authenticated field then shows No. Verification isn’t retried automatically — a user (or the originating workflow, for automatic triggers) needs to start a new microdeposit verification.

Related resources

See these related resources to help you get the most out of Payabli.