GHS Bank Transfer

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Getting Started

We recommend checking out the introductory section to understand the basics of direct charge first. This guide assumes you’ve read that.

The Process

Collecting payments via bank transfer charge is straightforward:

• You call the bank transfer charge endpoint to create a charge and generate account details for the customer to pay into.
• The customer transfers to the generated account.
• We send you a webhook notifying you that we've received the payment.
• You verify the payment and complete the customer's order.

Initiating the Charge

To initiate the charge, you'll call the bank transfer charge endpoint, which is supported in some of our backend SDKs. You'll need to specify:

• tx_ref: A unique reference code you generate for each transaction.
• amount: The transaction amount.
• currency: The currency set to GHS.
• email: The customer's email address.

curl --request POST \
   --url https://api.flutterwave.com/v3/charges?type=bank_transfer \
   --header 'Authorization: Bearer FLW_SECRET_KEY' \
   --header 'content-type: application/json' \
   --data '{
      "tx_ref": "UNIQUE_TRANSACTION_REFERENCE",
      "amount": "1500",
      "currency": "GHS",
      "email": "[email protected]"
    }'

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Integration Tip

You can also specify a list of subaccounts to split the payment into. See split payments for details.

There are more options available when initiating a bank transfer charge, such as the payment expiry, customer's phone_number and additional meta. See the endpoint docs for details.

{
  "tx_ref": "UNIQUE_TRANSACTION_REFERENCE",
  "amount": "1500",
  "currency": "GHS",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "subaccounts": [
    {
      "id": "RS_D87A9EE339AE28BFA2AE86041C6DE70E"
    }
  ]
}

{
	"tx_ref": "UNIQUE_TRANSACTION_REFERENCE",
	"amount": "1500",
	"currency": "GHS",
	"email": "[email protected]",
	"bank_transfer_options": {
		"expires": 3600
	}
}

If the charge is created successfully, you'll get a successful response containing the generated account details.

{
    "status": "success",
    "message": "Charge initiated",
    "meta": {
        "authorization": {
            "transfer_reference": "MockFLWRef-1742392419794",
            "transfer_account": "7003000100286",
            "transfer_bank": "Affinity",
            "account_expiration": "2025-03-19 14:53:39",
            "transfer_note": "Mock note",
            "transfer_amount": "103.00",
            "mode": "banktransfer"
        }
    }
}

Completing the Payment

The meta.authorization object contains the account details for the transfer: the bank name (transfer_bank), account number (transfer_account), and amount (transfer_amount). Pass the details on to your customer, and they can make a transfer into the account (for instance, from their bank app).

🧪

Testing Tip

In Test Mode, all bank transfers will automatically be paid after a few seconds.

Webhooks

When payment is made, we'll send you a webhook with a payload like this:

{
	"event": "charge.completed",
	"data": {
		"id": 407347576,
		"tx_ref": "UNIQUE_TRANSACTION_REFERENCE",
		"flw_ref": "000016210415121239000082517439",
		"device_fingerprint": "N/A",
		"amount": 1500,
		"currency": "GHS",
		"charged_amount": 1500,
		"app_fee": 21,
		"merchant_fee": 0,
		"processor_response": "success",
		"auth_model": "AUTH",
		"ip": "N/A",
		"narration": "Flutterwave Developers",
		"status": "successful",
		"payment_type": "bank_transfer",
		"created_at": "2021-04-15T11:13:10.000Z",
		"account_id": 82913,
		"customer": {
			"id": 254967086,
			"fullname": "user example",
			"phone_number": "2349012345678",
			"email": "[email protected]",
			"created_at": "2021-04-14T16:39:17.000Z"
		}
	}
}

Now, your webhook endpoint can handle the event and complete the customer's order. For help setting up webhooks, see our guide to webhooks.

In your webhook handler, you can then verify the payment and credit your customers with whatever they paid for. See our guide to transaction verification for details.