Payment Issues

Returned payments

When an ACH payment is returned, it begins the returned payments process. The specific process depends on who is charge of managing paper checks.

  • If Flywire is in charge of managing paper checks:

    1. The money is sent as a paper check to the student's preferred address.

    2. The payer is notified of the return with a Flywire notification.

    3. The bank account enrollment is cancelled.

    The payer must re-enroll in eRefunds to receive their refund payment as a direct deposit. Once the payer re-enrolls in eRefunds, the new or updated bank information is used for the next payment.

  • If Flywire does not manage the paper checks, the returned payment is discarded. Flywire sends you a notification about the returned payment(s). You are in charge of communicating with the entity responsible for printing the paper checks.

Cancelling an eRefund payment

Whether you can cancel a refund depends on the student's refund preference:

  • If the payer has already enrolled in eRefunds prior to the file being loaded into Flywire, you cannot cancel the payment.

  • If the eRefund payment is being held during the 24-hour shelving process, Flywire can manually cancel the payment. You need to contact support via a phone call (preferred) or email.

  • If the eRefunds payment is being sent via paper check, contact the entity responsible for printing the paper check and put a stop payment on the check.

Discarded - Invalid Amount

Payments are put in the Discarded - Invalid Amount status when you create an eRefund payment of less than (<) zero dollars or greater than (>) $50,000.

Refunds have a single transaction maximum amount of $50,000 USD for compliance reasons. Any refund greater than $50,000 will not be processed. To send the full refund payment, you can submit multiple refund transactions in the same file on the same day.

The refund limit is per refund transaction, not per receiver or per day.

The refund maximum is not configurable by your institution.

Discarded - Invalid Address

Paper check payments are put in the Discarded - Invalid Address status when a mailing address is not in the United States or the zip code is not valid.

Paper checks can only be sent to United States domestic addresses. If the student's preferred address is an international address, they can enroll in eRefunds using a United States bank account or update their preferred mailing address.

A valid zip code is exactly 5 or 9 digits, it includes the base zip code (5 digits) and an optional geographic identifier (optional +4 digits). If a zip code is entered with a different number of digits, the paper check cannot be created.

This status only occurs when Flywire is managing paper checks. If Flywire is not managing paper checks, the addresses are not processed.