How it Works

Prerequisites

To validate the ownership and validity of a bank account, you must add money to your ZWITCH Verification Account.

You can transfer money to your ZWITCH Verification Account from:

• Any savings or current account.
  The ZWITCH Verification Account has its own account number and IFSC. Use these to add the ZWITCH Verification Account as a beneficiary on your netbanking portal. After adding the beneficiary, you can transfer money to the ZWITCH Verification Account via NEFT or IMPS.
  
  

• Your ZWITCH Primary Account.
  You can use our wallet-to-wallet transfer feature to transfer money from your ZWITCH Primary Account to your ZWITCH Verification Account. Wallet-to-wallet transfers do not require the creation of a beneficiary. Use the ZWITCH Primary Account ID as the debit account ID and the ZWITCH Verification Account ID as the Credit Account ID to perform the transfer.

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Note

Amount in the ZWITCH Verification Account is only used to verify a bank account. It cannot be used for anything else.

Basic Bank Account Verification

To verify the validity and ownership of a bank account, send the account number and IFSC in the Verify Bank Account API. When we receive the request, we try to make a small deposit (₹1) to the bank account details provided by you.

If the deposit is successful, the API response contains status: success. This means the account details provided by you are valid and exist in the bank database. The response also contains the account holder’s name. You can check the name returned by the API with the name in your database and decide if you can make a transfer to the account.

If we are not able to make the deposit, the API response contains status: failed. This means the account details provided by you are incorrect. The response also contains a message parameter that contains the reason for the failure as given to us by the bank.

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Bank Account Verification Uses IMPS

While verifying a bank account, we try to deposit money to the account via IMPS. The API response contains status: success even if the account number provided is not linked to the IFSC provided, but is linked to a different IFSC in the same bank.

For example, Account number 12345678901 is linked to IFSC HDFC0000123. The Verify Bank Account API response contains status: success even if you send IFSC HDFC0000987 while verifying the account.

Amount Verification

While verifying a bank account, you have an option to specify any custom amount (between ₹1 and ₹2) to be deposited in the account being verified.

After the account verification is successful, you can ask your customer to specify the amount deposited in your account. This lets you know if your customer is able to access the account. This serves as an additional check, ensures you are transferring money to the right person, and helps prevent fraud.

To perform amount verification while verifying a bank account, set the force_penny_drop parameter to false and set the force_penny_drop_amount to any amount between ₹1 and ₹2.