💰 Payment Methods: Overview

Vlge supports a variety of payment methods, either by ACH, card, or check - whether you are being paid by your members or you are paying your vendors.

For most ACH transactions we use Western Alliance Bank which establishes a holding account for you that you can use as your operating account or simply as a method of accepting ACH and/or checks. Create your Western Alliance ACH account in Financial Dashboard. ACH processing times vary, but usually they settle in 2 days.

Western Alliance Bank also allows you to quickly and easily send payments to vendors with integrated Bill Pay (ACH) and Integrated Vendor Pay (Mailed Checks).

For credit cards, we utilize Stripe - one of the leading payment processing platforms. With Stripe, residents/Owners can use their stored payment methods through "Link" (a wallet service owned by Stripe) or simply add credit cards directly.

Stripe is setup in your Financial Dashboard. Payments made through Strips settle within a few days and your deposits to your connected bank are made daily. Stripe maintains a small balance in your account (held from disbursement) to cover any refunds or chargebacks (though these are fairly rare with HOAs). In some cases, a resident may setup Autopay, but forget and make an additional payment, then request a refund.

Note: For some Link payment methods, the placeholder data that shows the method includes "0000" or long expiration dates like 12/2040. This is normal.

Most paper checks (if still accepted) are mailed to a Lockbox in Nevada hosted by Western Alliance Bank. Checks are mailed with payment coupons, scanned in, deposited in your Western Alliance holding account, and appear in Vlge in the Financial Dashboard. There is a small fee for receiving, opening, scanning, and depositing paper checks (see Financial Dashboard and Settings)

You can designate a specific local address for mailing or drop off of physical checks completely outside of the Vlge platform. With these, you would be responsible for recording the receipt or acknowledging the deposit in the bank if linked through Vlge's bank linking system (Plaid).