Transfer Failures

There are several reasons bank transfers can fail, a few of which are outlined below. When a transfer fails it is usually a result of an ACH failure which is assigned an ACH return code after being rejected from the financial institution. A few common failure examples include:

• Insufficient Funds (R01): Pending transfers can fail due to insufficient funds from the source bank account.
• No Account/Unable to Locate Account (R03): The recipient of a transfer has closed their bank account or has incorrectly entered their bank account/routing number when attaching their funding source.
• Customer Advises Not Authorized (R10): The owner of a bank account has told their bank that this transfer was unauthorized.

Retrieving the transfer

You can check the status of a transfer at any time by retrieving the transfer via the API. When a bank transfer is unable to be completed, its status will be updated to failed. The response from the API when retrieving the transfer should contain a "failure" link that your application will follow to retrieve the transfer failure reason in the next step.

Example failure link

"failure": {
    "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/a1e58cd8-11ec-e811-8111-bec1f96924ed/failure",
    "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
    "resource-type": "failure"
}

Retrieving the reason for a failed bank transfer

If your application is subscribed to webhooks, you’ll receive either the transfer_failed event if the transfer belongs to a Dwolla account or the customer_transfer_failed/customer_bank_transfer_failed(Verified Customer only) event if the transfer belongs to an API Customer. The event contains a links to the associated account as well as the transfer resource. When retrieving the failed bank transfer reason, the response will contain information on the ACH return code and description, as well as _links to the Funding Source and Customer that triggered the bank transfer failure.

Request and response (view schema in 'raw')

var transferUrl =
  "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/8997ebed-69be-e611-80ea-0aa34a9b2388";

appToken.get(`${transferUrl}/failure`).then((res) => res.body.code); // => 'R01'

What occurs in the Dwolla system when a bank transfer fails?

When a bank transfer failure occurs there is a subset of systematic actions Dwolla may take on the Customer and/or the funding source based on the ACH return code. It is recommended to have an active webhook subscription, which is used to listen for events relating to any Customer or funding source state change. Please refer to the table below to understand the systematic actions that Dwolla may take for Customer and funding source resources, as well as the events that are created.

Systematic actions taken against the Customer

Systematic actions taken against the bank funding source

Why does Dwolla automatically take these actions?

Being able to catch and take action errors can be beneficial on many levels. For instance, if your Customer initiates a transaction which fails with an R10 (Customer Advises Not Authorized) return code, Dwolla will automatically put the suspected Customer in a deactivated status, thereby not allowing them to initiate or receive more transfers. This gives you the ability investigate the Customer to determine if they are a valid party without worrying about them sending funds. Other return codes may only affect bank funding sources in which Dwolla may automatically unverify or remove a bank in response to various return codes.

List of possible return codes, descriptions, and actions

Below is a table of the most common return codes we see involved in transactions. For a full list of return codes, you can check out the ACH return code list on our blog.

As a best practice, we recommend handling any systematic actions that trigger webhooks as a result of a transfer failure rather than relying on the specific actions as referenced below. We do not recommend building a workflow around each individual return code in the table below. This table solely meant to be a reference for you to be aware of actions Dwolla may take on common transfer failures.