The RTP® Network is a payments system that was launched by The Clearing House in 2017 as the newest payment rail in the U.S. since the advent of the ACH Network. Payment speed and availability are the primary benefits of utilizing the RTP® Network, as businesses can send and receive payments to eligible bank accounts 24/7/365. In addition, RTP transfers come with other favorable characteristics, such as greater transparency of payment status that provides confirmation of funds availability to the end user sending or receiving a payment.
The core of the Dwolla Platform was built around a simplified connection to the U.S. banking infrastructure for businesses to easily initiate digital payments via the ACH Network. As the Dwolla Platform evolves, RTP adds a new processing channel for businesses, providing flexible payment capabilities to build within their own applications.
While RTP and ACH are similar in many ways, there are some key differences:
The RTP® Network supports credit “push” transfers, whereas ACH supports credit push as well as debit pull transfers. RTP is particularly suited to support disbursement use cases. Whether your business is built around B2B, B2C or a combination, you can power your application with RTP.
On the Dwolla Platform, Funding Sources allow bank accounts to be added or retrieved. Available for both a Dwolla Master Account and Customers (end users) resources, funding sources have represented payment accounts used for ACH, Wire, and/or Push-to-Debit activities. Dwolla will be able to identify a bank account as RTP-enabled upon creation of a Funding Source, so no additional information is needed from your end users or application.
When retrieving an existing Funding Source resource from the API, the response will contain a “channels” attribute which represents the different capabilities available for transfers. For a bank account, historically the only values available have been “ach” and “wire”. The example below represents how “real-time-payments” is returned within the “channels” array to identify an RTP-eligible account.
"channels": [
"ach",
"real-time-payments"
]
In order to initiate a transfer with RTP processing, an optional processingChannel
JSON object must be included in the transfer request. The processingChannel
object contains the destination
key with a value of real-time-payments
. This processingChannel object will be returned when retrieving the transfer from the API. Specifying the destination processingChannel with real-time-payments
will require a permission to be enabled.
An optional rtpDetails
object can be included in the transfer request body. This allows additional information to be passed to the payment recipient's bank account about their RTP credit transfer.
The following example assumes the sending party has funds pre-loaded to their balance
Funding Source and that the destination party has a bank account connected that is RTP-enabled.
var requestBody = {
_links: {
source: {
href: "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/b268f6b9-db3b-4ecc-83a2-8823a53ec8b7",
},
destination: {
href: "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/ecf993e2-fa22-4cea-8022-c7861200288f",
},
},
amount: {
currency: "USD",
value: "10000.00",
},
processingChannel: {
destination: "real-time-payments",
},
rtpDetails: {
destination: {
remittanceData: "ABC_123 Remittance Data",
},
},
};
dwolla
.post("transfers", requestBody)
.then((res) => res.headers.get("location")); // => 'https://api.dwolla.com/transfers/636de847-7d02-e711-80ee-0aa34a9b2388'
When retrieving the transfer from the API, the response will contain an rtpDetails
object. Within the rtpDetails
object will be a destination
JSON object that includes a remittanceData
key-value pair, depending on if it was included in the original RTP transfer request, and a networkId
key-value pair.
The networkId
is a unique identifier for an RTP credit transfer which is passed in the payment request to the recipient's bank. It appears on the transfer API resource once the credit entry clears into the destination bank account.
var transferUrl =
"https://api.dwolla.com/transfers/243fd252-3fcf-eb11-8134-d050ab358a03";
dwolla.get(transferUrl).then(function (res) {
res.body.status; // => 'processed'
});
Webhooks notification events will be processed in the same sequence as an ACH transfer. The primary difference is that once the transfer is created, the completion or failure events will be triggered moments later rather than days. The specific events include -
*Based on responses from TCH and Cross River Bank, we will provide more descriptive failure reasons.
Error codes provide the reason a message did not complete and can be found on the payment Result.Code
. The Result.Code
will be OK if the payment was successfully sent/received.
Use sandbox environment to test API requests.
All funds transfers made using the Dwolla Platform are performed by a financial institution partner, and any funds held in a Dwolla Balance are held by a financial institution partner. Learn more about our financial institution partners.