Same Day Micro-deposits Link best practices

Plaid provides a suite of fraud prevention products that assist your application in catching bad actors and ACH returns. Verifying the source of funds with Identity, confirming the real-time Balance prior to a transfer, and leveraging our machine learning model Signal to prevent returns and release funds earlier all require a credential-based connection to a user’s bank account. If an account is connected via Same Day Micro-deposits, these features are not available and could increase the likelihood that you experience fraud and ACH returns.

In order to reduce fraud upstream on your application, we recommend leveraging Plaid Identity Verification to verify a government ID or match with a selfie of the document holder. This requires your user to take additional steps, though ensures verification of the Identity before the user opts to link their bank account, and is available for all Auth Types (manual and credential-based).

If you identify a user to be riskier, consider disabling Same Day Micro-deposits (either as an optional configuration at Link failure points, or via the upfront Auth Type Select configuration) for those users, since fraud prevention products are not available when they connect via this method. To do this, set the same_day_microdeposits_enabled and/or auth_type_select_enabled parameters to false in the auth object in your /link/token/create call for that user.

Another option for riskier users is to leave Same Day Micro-deposits enabled, but enable Reroute to Credentials in Forced mode, which will only allow the user to link via Same Day Micro-deposits when using a routing number not supported by other authentication methods. To do this on a per-session basis, specify the FORCED value for the reroute_to_credentials field within the auth object in your /link/token/create call.

You may also consider changing your user’s experience with your service based on their connection method. For example, if a user connected via Same Day Micro-deposits, you may consider enforcing a lower transfer threshold than for users where it was possible to verify identity and increasing hold times on those funds.

Instant Match and Automated micro-deposits are supported as additional Auth types when Instant Auth is not available. Same Day Micro-deposits can be configured as an option at Link failure points. These configurations can improve conversion by enabling more users to connect their institutions when Instant Auth fails.

Prompt user to verify micro-deposits in Link

To optimize conversion, we strongly recommend sending your user a notification (e.g. email, SMS, push notification) prompting them to come back into your app and verify the micro-deposit code in the transaction description.