Payouts

A payout represents the flow of funds from a client's virtual account to an end user. A payout can be for an arbitrary amount if you have sufficient funds stored in your virtual account to cover the payout. Using Payouts requires integrating with virtual account API routes and receiving transaction webhooks.

• Instant: Payouts ensures that funds arrive in your users' accounts almost immediately.
• Easy to Integrate: A single, unified API for both Payment Initiation and Payouts streamlines the development process.
• Verified: In conjunction with Plaid's Auth and Identity products, users' bank details are securely and automatically populated. This pre-verification step ensures you are always sending funds to a valid and correct bank account, minimising payment failures and fraud risk.
• Low Cost: Move away from the expensive and variable fees associated with card payments. Payouts offers a low, fixed-fee structure, allowing you to significantly reduce costs.

Make sure your virtual account is set up before following these steps. For more information on setting up an account, see Managing virtual accounts.

1. Call /wallet/get to check your virtual account balance (optional).

   • If you have insufficient funds to make your desired payout, make sure to fund your virtual account before proceeding. After funding your virtual account, another request to /wallet/get will show the updated balance.

2. Call /user/create to get a user_id representing the recipient of the payout.

   • Provide a unique client_user_id and an identity object containing the recipient's name plus at least one of emails or phone_numbers. All other fields in the identity object are optional.

   • Calling /user/create again with the same client_user_id returns the same user_id, so you can re-use it for future payouts to the same recipient. For more information, see User APIs.

3. Call /wallet/transaction/execute with the user_id and store the transaction_id and status from the response.

   • Configure transaction webhooks to receive real-time status update webhooks for each payout transaction.

   • In addition to using webhooks, you can confirm the transaction has been executed by calling /wallet/transaction/get with the transaction_id.

Verification of Payee is a regulatory requirement under the EU Instant Payments Regulation. It requires that PSPs check the recipient's name against the IBAN and return the result to the payer before execution, reducing fraud and user error. Plaid automatically performs this check for all Eurozone payouts.

The payee verification check returns one of five statuses: Match, Partial Match, No Match, Error (indicating that an error occurred during payee verification), and Match not possible (indicating that the verification system is unavailable). By default, payments proceed for all statuses except No Match. You can also customise the product behaviour for the Partial Match and No Match statuses by contacting your account manager.

If the payment is blocked:

• The WALLET_TRANSACTION_STATUS_UPDATE webhook will indicate a failed payment.

• Calling /wallet/transaction/get with the transaction_id will show the TRANSACTION_PAYEE_VERIFICATION_NO_MATCH error.

You can begin testing Payouts in Sandbox by following the steps listed in the Add Virtual Accounts to your App guide. For Production access you will first need to submit a product access request support ticket.