When you set up a Slate Payments deposit account (the Stripe Connect holding account on the Slate Payments platform), you are also asked to specify an external bank account to which available funds should be sent. These transfers to your bank account are called payouts. The same external bank account can be used for multiple deposit accounts.

Payout timing

You can determine a schedule for automatic payouts to these external accounts (every day, once per week on a specified day, once per month on a specified day). We recommend a weekly (or longer) schedule.

The first transfer and payout to your external bank may take up to seven business days to initiate and post to your account, regardless of the schedule you have chosen for your subsequent/regular payouts.

Once initiated, a payout from Stripe to your bank account may take a few business days to arrive, as would be the case for any other ACH transaction or bank-based transfer. We record when a payout was initiated. You will see expected/upcoming payouts in the transfers page and the expected arrival date in the detail pop-up.

📝 Note

Starting September 29, 2025, automatic payouts in USD are initiated on the same day (in UTC) they are expected to arrive for all connected accounts in the United States. For example, if a payout is scheduled to land on a Wednesday, the payout will be created on that same day and the funds should be available before the end of the day.

In most cases, you will see a one day difference in Slate between initiated and received dates because of the time-zone differences between Stripe’s initiatiation shortly after midnight in UTC and Slate recording in the Eastern timezone. Creating payouts closer to your landing date gives Stripe more time to process refunds, disputes, and transfers, reducing the risk of connected accounts having negative balances.

Payout/Transfer records

Once payouts have started, you can access their details in the Payouts/Transfers section of a Slate Payments deposit account’s Payment history.

With recent updates at Stripe and how ACH payments information is collected (instant authentication and authorization by the user/payer at the time of initiation), funds are no longer separated by fund source on the Stripe side—all funds now go into the generic card balance. This means that, for more recent payouts, you will only see one fund source and payout for a given scheduled date.

Payout and transfer details

Payouts are about transferring an available balance from your Stripe holding account to your external bank account. A particular payout amount is the sum of the net amounts of all the relevant transactions since your last payout. That is, the transactions are not limited to new incoming/received activity, but also include any refund activity, chargeback withdrawals (also known as dispute refunds) and any other ad-hoc adjustments.

For US-based accounts, a transfer to your account includes all relevant transactions that cleared prior to 21:00 UTC (typically 5:00 PM Eastern) two business days before the payout transaction. For example, on Thursday you would receive a transfer of all funds received/cleared as of 5:00 PM Eastern Tuesday.

Card Charges can generally be expected to be available (or cleared) for payout on a two-business-day delay. In addition to weekends, bank holidays affect when payouts are  initiated and paid. For example, card charges made on a Friday would be expected to be available for payout the following Tuesday, unless that Tuesday is a bank holiday, in which case they are paid out on that Wednesday.

For non-US accounts the delay before funds of a received transaction are available for payout will vary. In most countries outside the US, each transfer will include transactions from seven days prior. Similar rules regarding business days, weekends, and bank holidays apply.

Reconciliation

A payout contains relevant transactions for its deposit account, regardless of how you categorize payment accounts in Slate—that is, the payment_account prompt values you use to filter query results.

If a given payment account prompt is configured to use the deposit account, all relevant payment transactions for that account will be included in the payout, including Stripe fee items related to in-person Terminal payment usage and potentially other system-initiated reversals or corrections.

The topline payout sum is always the correct amount. If you had a prior payout failure (or failures), make sure that you include the details from those failed payout reconciliations in your current calculations—that is, run all relevant reconciliation reports and combine them. If your account had a longer-lasting negative balance, the topline payout amount will reflect the presence of these prior negative transactions that occurred in your account.

If you still see a discrepancy between the topline payout sum and the sum of the net amounts of the included individual transactions as listed in the standard Excel export, submit a ticket that includes a pre-filtered Payment history link.

Pre-filtered payment history

There are two ways to see which individual payment items are included in a payout:

The Payouts/Transfers search page

Select a payout record to see its details.

Select the View test payments in this test payout/transfer to see which individual payments were bundled into the transfer.

You can separate application, event, and other fee types and reconcile the details with the standard report from this pre-filtered payment history page. Alternatively, create a query on the Payments base to include additional data.

The payment detail pop-up

If a particular Received or Refunded payment is associated with a payout, it receives a Payout ID, payout date, and a link to the pre-filtered payment history, which displays the other transactions contained in that payout.

💡 Please include the URL to this pre-filtered payment history in any support tickets about reconciliation.

Two-way payouts

For clean reconciliation and convenience, the best option is to adjust the default payout settings for your connect account so that withdrawals can be made directly from your linked external bank account to cover a negative balance.

📖 Set up two-way payouts

Testing payouts

Test payments will not generate an actual test payout transaction to your external bank account.

Stripe and Slate do simulate how a test payout would be recorded, and test payout records do appear in the Payouts/Transfers page of your production database. If a test transaction was initiated in the production database, it will be associated with the corresponding test payout. Test payments initiated in a test environment are not associated with the test payout record.

Payout failures and errors

If your bank can’t receive or process a payout for any reason, the funds are returned to Stripe. It can take up to five additional business days for your bank to send the funds back and inform Stripe and Slate that it failed. If this happens, you receive an email notification. As a result, it is possible for a payout status to initially appear as paid, then change to failed.

When a payout fails, a detailed message appears to help you make adjustments.

If you have incorrect bank details, you can update the account number and routing number via the account pop-up in Slate. In most of these cases, Stripe will automatically re-attempt the payout to the new account coordinates.

🔔 Always update account and routing numbers together.

Payout failures occur most frequently when an external bank account is not configured, alongside Slate, to allow direct debits for negative balances, or the debit was rejected by your account holder or finance team. In these cases, you will see the following failure message:

Resuming payouts after failure

When a particular payout fails, unless related to an incorrect account or routing number, all subsequent payouts are placed on hold and do not resume automatically.

While payouts are on hold, payment collection generally continues, and new incoming funds will continue to accumulate in your account.

To resume payouts after a failure:

1. Follow instructions to verify or update your external bank account information or settings.

2. Wait to see if a pending payout record appears in your database (usually within a business day).

3. If payouts don’t resume, complete any explicit instructions from the Stripe verification or the payout’s failure message.

4. If payouts still don’t resume, submit a ticket letting us know that you’ve completed these steps, especially for failed two-way payout direct debits.

We will check on the account status and may need to manually re-initiate the payouts.

The next payout will include the sum of the items contained in the previous failed attempt, in addition to any newly accumulated funds.