Same Day Micro-deposits
Learn how to authenticate your users with traditional, manually verified micro-deposits
Overview
Same Day Micro-deposits can be used to authenticate any bank account in the US, but especially for the ~2,000 institutions that don't support Instant Auth, Instant Match, or Automated Micro-deposit verification. Plaid will make two deposits that post within one business day (using Same Day ACH, which is roughly two days faster than the standard micro-deposit experience of two to three days). Users are instructed to manually verify the deposited amounts within one business day.

Not all Plaid Developer accounts are enabled for Automated Micro-deposits or Same Day Micro-deposits by default. To enable these features or check your status, contact your account manager or submit a product access Support ticket.
The Same Day Micro-deposit flow
A user connects their financial institution using the following connection flow:
- Starting on a page in your app, the user clicks an action that opens Plaid Link with the correct Auth configuration.
- Inside of Plaid Link, the user enters the micro-deposit initiation flow and provides their legal name, account and routing number.
- Upon successful authentication, Link closes with a
public_token
and ametadata
account status ofpending_manual_verification
. - Behind the scenes, Plaid sends two micro-deposits to the user's account that will post within one to two business days.
- After one to two days, the user is prompted to verify the two deposit amounts in their account, by
opening Link with a generated
link_token
. - Finally, Plaid will reverse the two micro-deposits to pull back the deposit amounts from the user's bank account.
When these steps are done, your user's Auth data is verified and ready to fetch.
Configure & Create a link_token
Create a link_token
with the following parameters:
products
array should include onlyauth
as a product when using same-day manual micro-deposit verification. While in most cases additional products can be added to existing Plaid Items, Items created for same-day manual micro-deposit verification are an exception and cannot be used with any Plaid products other than Auth.country_codes
set to['US']
– Micro-deposit verification is currently only available in the United States.
1// Using Express2const express = require('express');3const app = express();4app.use(express.json());56const { Configuration, PlaidApi, PlaidEnvironments } = require('plaid');78const configuration = new Configuration({9 basePath: PlaidEnvironments[process.env.PLAID_ENV],10 baseOptions: {11 headers: {12 'PLAID-CLIENT-ID': process.env.PLAID_CLIENT_ID,13 'PLAID-SECRET': process.env.PLAID_SECRET,14 },15 },16});1718const client = new PlaidApi(configuration);1920app.post('/api/create_link_token', async function (request, response) {21 // Get the client_user_id by searching for the current user22 const user = await User.find(...);23 const clientUserId = user.id;24 const request = {25 user: {26 // This should correspond to a unique id for the current user.27 client_user_id: clientUserId,28 },29 client_name: 'Plaid Test App',30 products: ['auth'],31 language: 'en',32 webhook: 'https://webhook.example.com',33 redirect_uri: 'https://domainname.com/oauth-page.html',34 country_codes: ['US'],35 };36 try {37 const createTokenResponse = await client.linkTokenCreate(request);38 response.json(createTokenResponse.data);39 } catch (error) {40 // handle error41 }42});
Initialize Link with a link_token
After creating a link_token
for the auth
product, use it to initialize Plaid Link.
When the user successfully inputs their account and routing numbers, the onSuccess()
callback
function will return a public_token
, with verification_status
equal to 'pending_manual_verification'
.
1const linkHandler = Plaid.create({2 // Fetch a link_token configured for 'auth' from your app server3 token: (await $.post('/create_link_token')).link_token,4 onSuccess: (public_token, metadata) => {5 // Send the public_token and connected accounts to your app server6 $.post('/exchange_public_token', {7 publicToken: public_token,8 accounts: metadata.accounts,9 });1011 metadata = {12 ...,13 link_session_id: String,14 institution: {15 name: null, // name is always null for same day micro-deposits16 institution_id: null // institution_id is always null for same day micro-deposits17 },18 accounts: [{19 id: 'vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D',20 mask: '1234',21 name: null,22 type: 'depository',23 subtype: 'checking' | 'savings',24 verification_status: 'pending_manual_verification'25 }]26 }27 },28 // ...29});3031// Open Link on user-action32linkHandler.open();
Display a "pending" status in your app
Because Same Day verification usually takes one business day to complete, we recommend displaying a UI in your app that communicates to a user that verification is currently pending.
You can use the verification_status
key returned in the onSuccess
metadata.accounts
object once
Plaid Link closes successfully.
1verification_status: 'pending_manual_verification';
You can also fetch the verification_status
for an
Item's account via the Plaid API, to obtain the latest account status.
User entry points in Link
The following table describes the primary entry points into the manual micro-deposit flow:
Exit | Error | Institution Search | Institution Search | Institution Select |
---|---|---|---|---|
When user clicks X action button | When user encounters any error | When no results are found | When user scrolls to end of results | When institution health is poor |
In addition to the entry points above, you can optionally configure Same Day Micro-deposit flow to be available as an option on the main Auth screen, even if Instant Match or Instant Auth is available. Enabling Same Day Micro-deposits in this way can result in typical conversion increases of up to 5 percentage points. For more information on enabling this setting, see Flexible Auth.
Exchange the public token
In your own backend server, call the /item/public_token/exchange
endpoint with the Link public_token
received in the onSuccess
callback to
obtain an access_token
. Persist the returned access_token
, account_id
, and item_id
in your database
in relation to the user.
Note that micro-deposits will only be delivered to the ACH network in the Production environment, and not in Development. To test your integration outside of Production, see Testing same day micro-deposits in Sandbox.
Select group for content switcher1// publicToken and accountID are sent from your app to your backend-server2const accountID = 'vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D';3const publicToken = 'public-sandbox-b0e2c4ee-a763-4df5-bfe9-46a46bce993d';45// Obtain an access_token from the Link public_token6const response = await client7 .itemPublicTokenExchange({8 public_token: publicToken,9 })10 .catch((err) => {11 // handle error12 });13const accessToken = response.access_token;
1{2 "access_token": "access-sandbox-5cd6e1b1-1b5b-459d-9284-366e2da89755",3 "item_id": "M5eVJqLnv3tbzdngLDp9FL5OlDNxlNhlE55op",4 "request_id": "m8MDnv9okwxFNBV"5}
Check the account verification status (optional)
In some cases you may want to implement logic in your app to display the verification_status
of
an Item that is pending manual verification. The /accounts/get
API endpoint allows you to query this information.
1// Fetch the accountID and accessToken from your database2const accountID = 'vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D';3const accessToken = 'access-sandbox-5cd6e1b1-1b5b-459d-9284-366e2da89755';4const request: AccountsGetRequest = {5 access_token: accessToken,6};7const response = await client.accountsGet(request).catch((err) => {8 // handle error9});10const account = response.accounts.find((a) => a.account_id === accountID);11const verificationStatus = account.verification_status;
1{2 "accounts": [3 {4 "account_id": "vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D",5 "balances": { Object },6 "mask": "0000",7 "name": null,8 "official_name": null,9 "type": "depository"10 "subtype": "checking" | "savings",11 "verification_status":12 "pending_manual_verification" |13 "manually_verified" |14 "verification_expired",15 },16 ...17 ],18 "item": { Object },19 "request_id": String20}
Prompt user to verify micro-deposits in Link
After one to two business days, the two micro-deposits sent to the user's account are expected to have posted. To securely verify a Same Day Micro-deposits account, your user needs to come back into Link to verify the two amounts manually.
To optimze 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 two posted micro-deposit amounts.
Verification of Same Day Micro-deposits is performed in two steps:
- In your backend server, create a new
link_token
from the associatedaccess_token
for the given user. - Pass the generated
link_token
into your client-side app, using thetoken
parameter in the Link configuration. This will automatically trigger the micro-deposit verification flow in Link.
Create a new link_token from a persistent access_token
Generate a link_token
for verifying micro-deposits by passing the user's associated access_token
to the
/link/token/create
API endpoint. Note that the products
field should not be set because the micro-deposits verification flow does not change the products associated with the given access_token
.
1// Using Express2const express = require('express');3const app = express();4app.use(express.json());56const { Configuration, PlaidApi, PlaidEnvironments } = require('plaid');78const configuration = new Configuration({9 basePath: PlaidEnvironments[process.env.PLAID_ENV],10 baseOptions: {11 headers: {12 'PLAID-CLIENT-ID': process.env.PLAID_CLIENT_ID,13 'PLAID-SECRET': process.env.PLAID_SECRET,14 'Plaid-Version': '2020-09-14',15 },16 },17});1819const client = new PlaidApi(configuration);2021app.post('/api/create_link_token', async function (request, response) {22 // Get the client_user_id by searching for the current user23 const user = await User.find(...);24 const clientUserId = user.id;25 const request = {26 user: {27 client_user_id: clientUserId,28 },29 client_name: 'Plaid Test App',30 language: 'en',31 webhook: 'https://webhook.sample.com',32 country_codes: [CountryCode.Us],33 access_token: 'ENTER_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN',34 };35 try {36 const createTokenResponse = await client.linkTokenCreate(request);37 response.json(createTokenResponse.data);38 } catch (error) {39 // handle error40 }41});
Initialize Link with the generated link_token
In your client-side app, pass the generated link_token
into the Link token
parameter. Link will
automatically detect that Same Day verification is required for the Item and will open directly into
the verification flow (see the image above).
In Link, the user will be prompted to log in to their personal banking portal to confirm the two deposit
amounts. Upon successful entry of the two amounts, the onSuccess
callback will be fired, with an
updated verification_status: 'manually_verified'
.
There is no time limit for the user to verify the deposits, and the deposits can be entered in any order. A user has three attempts to enter their deposit amounts correctly, after which the Item will be permanently locked for security reasons. See INCORRECT_DEPOSIT_AMOUNTS and PRODUCT_NOT_READY for errors that may occur during the micro-deposit initiation and verification flow.
1const linkHandler = Plaid.create({2 token: await fetchLinkTokenForMicrodepositsVerification(),3 onSuccess: (public_token, metadata) => {4 metadata = {5 accounts: [{6 ...,7 verification_status: 'manually_verified',8 }],9 };10 },11 // ...12});1314// Open Link to verify micro-deposit amounts15linkHandler.open();
An Item's access_token
does not change when verifying micro-deposits, so there is no need to repeat
the exchange token process.
Fetch Auth data
Finally, we can retrieve Auth data once the user has manually verified their account through Same Day Micro-deposits:
Select group for content switcher1const accessToken = 'access-sandbox-5cd6e1b1-1b5b-459d-9284-366e2da89755';23// Instantly fetch Auth numbers4const request: AuthGetRequest = {5 access_token: accessToken,6};7const response = await client.authGet(request).catch((err) => {8 // handle error9});10const numbers = response.numbers;
1{2 "numbers": {3 "ach": [4 {5 "account_id": "vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D",6 "account": "9900009606",7 "routing": "011401533",8 "wire_routing": "021000021"9 }10 ],11 "eft": [],12 "international": [],13 "bacs": []14 },15 "accounts": [16 {17 "account_id": "vzeNDwK7KQIm4yEog683uElbp9GRLEFXGK98D",18 "balances": { Object },19 "mask": "0000",20 "name": null,21 "official_name": null,22 "verification_status": "manually_verified",23 "subtype": "checking" | "savings",24 "type": "depository"25 }26 ],27 "item": { Object },28 "request_id": "m8MDnv9okwxFNBV"29}
Check out the /auth/get
API reference documentation to see the full
Auth request and response schema.
Micro-deposit transaction description
When the micro-deposits post to your end user's bank account, the transaction description will be written with the format:
1<clientName> ACCTVERIFY
Plaid will reverse the microdeposits with one or more debit, but will not exceed the amount of the corresponding deposits — the transaction description will be written with the format:
1<clientName> ACCTVERIFY
The <clientName>
is defined by the value of the client_name
parameter that was used to create the link_token
that initialized Link.
Business or corporate accounts
Users with business or corporate accounts that have ACH debit blocks enabled on
their account may need to authorize Plaid's Company / Tax ID, 1460820571
, to
avoid any issues with linking their accounts.