Checks

Mercoa supports check payments to vendors who do not accept ACH payments. Mercoa will print and mail checks to vendors on your behalf, or your customers (C2) can print and mail checks themselves.

Key Considerations for Check Payments

Checks in Mercoa are printed using the account and routing number of the bank account you have linked to Mercoa.

Mercoa does not take custody of the funds, which allows your customer to maintain control of their cash flow.

Checks can only be printed against true checking accounts. Most BaaS providers’ checking accounts are actually virtual accounts, which cannot be used for check payments.

We recommend printing a test check to deposit into your bank account to ensure that the check can be processed.

Enabling Check Payments

Once a bank account has been linked to Mercoa, you can enable check payments by updating the checkEnabled field on the bank account.

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curl -X POST https://api.mercoa.com/entity/ent_8545a84e-a45f-41bf-bdf1-33b42a55812c/paymentMethod \
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     -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
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     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
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     -d '{
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  "type": "bankAccount",
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  "accountNumber": "99988767623",
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  "accountType": "CHECKING",
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  "routingNumber": "12345678",
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  "checkOptions": {
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    "signatoryName": "John Doe",
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    "enabled": true,
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    "initialCheckNumber": 5000
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  }
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}'

For the vendor to receive a check, you will need to create a payment method for the vendor with the type set to check.

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curl -X POST https://api.mercoa.com/entity/ent_21661ac1-a2a8-4465-a6c0-64474ba8181d/paymentMethod \
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     -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
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     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
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     -d '{
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  "type": "check",
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  "addressLine1": "123 Main St",
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  "city": "New York",
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  "country": "US",
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  "payToTheOrderOf": "John Doe",
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  "postalCode": "10001",
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  "stateOrProvince": "NY",
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  "addressLine2": "Apt 1"
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}'

Creating the Invoice

When creating the invoice, specify the source bank account as the paymentSourceId and the vendor’s check payment method as the paymentDestinationId.

By default, checks will be printed and mailed to the vendor. This can be changed by setting the paymentDestinationOptions on the invoice.

Printing the Check

Once the invoice has been created and is in the SCHEDULED status, you can generate the check PDF by using the generate check endpoint.

Once this endpoint has been called, the invoice will be automatically marked as PAID regardless of the delivery method selected on the invoice. This is to prevent duplicate payments.