Note: This article is relevant to merchants integrating with Zepto in Australia.
Zepto offer the ability to perform ‘Available Funds Pre-Checks’ prior to processing a scheduled or one-off payment. This delivers messaging that indicates whether there are sufficient funds in the target account to process a payment without a dishonour/failure taking place.
When a payment is processed, our API delivers one of several status messages. You can see them all in our API documentation.
If the Available Funds Pre-Check indicates dishonour/failure, the transaction status message will be pre-failed. This means the transaction was never submitted to the bank because we detected that there were insufficient funds.
How do I turn on pre-fail for my account?
If you've decided to use pre-fail as part of your funds' collection strategy, you will need to get in touch with us here at Zepto as we enable this feature on a case by case basis. The best way to contact us is to use the speech bubble that is present in the bottom right of your screen whenever you are on our documentation page, or logged in and viewing your Zepto accounts dashboard.
When we enable this feature for you, you will have a couple of configuration options. We offer the following types of pre-fail strategies:
Pre-fail
This is the straightforward implementation of our pre-fail feature. If we check a customers bank account and there are insufficient funds at that point in time, we will fail this transaction and notify your application and let you handle this event.
Dynamic
Using this strategy, Zepto will check the customer's account balance but will not fail any transactions for the first few transactions. During the first few transactions, the system will gather all the relevant information and will make a decision based on the information it has gathered from the few requests.
During these requests:
If there are enough funds in the contact's bank account, the direct debit request will be submitted to the bank and the system will enable the prefail strategy permanently for the contact.
If the funds are insufficient for the direct debit request to be successful, it will still be submitted to the relevant bank.
2.1 If the request is successful, the system will disable the prefail strategy permanently for the contact.
2.2 If the request is unsuccessful, the system will enable the prefail strategy permanently for this contact.
What options do you have when a transaction is pre-failed?
We deliver a flexible solution that allows you to configure the next steps when you experience a pre-fail. Programatically, you are able to simply retry the payment at an alternative time. But here are some ways in which our customers have configured the customer journey:
Try the payment request again over time until the transaction status is cleared
Notify your customer of a rescheduled transaction so they can make funds available
Leave the transaction as a failure and schedule an alternative or bundled future payment
Use alternative payment methods
Obviously, alternative methods may be more expensive, and you must adhere to any regulatory and consumer protection rights in your particular industry. But Zepto provides you with powerful options to collect funds successfully and provide a better customer experience.
Need more help?
Feel free to reach out if you have further questions by emailing us directly at support@zepto.com.au or clicking on the green bubble icon from the corner of the screen.