Bill Pay

Bill pay allows users to send payments or electronic checks to personal or business recipients called "payees." If bill pay is enabled at your financial institution, the bill pay option is available in the web or mobile Transfers screen.

iPay is an optional third-party vendor and the default bill pay provider for Narmi Banking; however, we also support Fiserv CheckFree and Paymentus. Other bill pay provider integrations should be discussed with your Narmi Relationship Manager to ensure all necessary functions and features can be incorporated into the Narmi Banking platform.

By default, every user will only have one funding account registered on iPay. This is the checking account submitted when enrolling the user in iPay and is also the user’s default funding account. Please contact your Narmi Relationship Manager for information on approving accounts in iPay.

Bill Pay Transfer Flow

This example flow uses iPay as the bill pay provider. For information on other supported bill pay providers, go to Fiserv CheckFree and Paymentus.

To send money via bill pay via iPay:

1. From the Transfers page on web or mobile, select Bill pay.
   

2. On the page that appears, enter the following information:

• To – Select a payee to send money to. For instructions on adding a new payee, go to Add a New Payee.

• Amount – Enter the amount of money to transfer

• Date of transfer/Payment Date – Enter the date that the transfer should occur (only weekdays are allowed, not weekends)

  Select Continue.

  

3. Review payment details and select Submit payment.

Add a New Payee

To link a new payee for bill pay:

1. For web, on the Make a payment page, select To, then select Link a new payee from the menu. If there are several payees, you may need to scroll down to see this option. If you have no existing payees, you will get the option to select payee type, shown in step 2.
   For mobile, after selecting Bill pay on the Transfers page, select To, then select Add a payee. If there are several payees, you may need to scroll down to see this option. If you have no existing payees, you automatically get the option to select payee type, shown in step 2.

   

2. In the page that appears, select the Payee type, either Business or Personal.
   For business payees, enter the payee's information and select Add payee.
   Note: Make sure to enter the correct merchant account number and zip code. Incorrect entries will result in payment by physical check.

   

   
   For personal payees, in addition to entering the payee's information, a secret phrase is required. After entering the payee's information, select Add payee. After sending the payment, share the secret phrase with the payee. The payee must enter this phrase in order to receive payment.

   

Manage Payees

Users can add or delete payees from their Narmi Banking Settings. For instructions, go to Payees (Bill Pay Recipients).

To edit payees, users must go to the iPay platform. For instructions, go to Edit a Payee.

Enable “From” Account for iPay

By default, every user has only one funding account registered with the iPay system (this is the checking account submitted when enrolling the user on iPay and is also the user’s default funding account). If your institution uses iPay for Bill Pay, you can enable a feature that allows users to select the “From” account when initiating a Bill Pay transfer. When enabled, the Bill Pay transfer flow displays a From account dropdown menu with all the user's checking accounts. If the selected account is not yet known to iPay, the system automatically makes a request to add (or "register") that account on the iPay side before processing the payment.

To enable this feature:

1. Your institution must use iPay for Bill Pay.

2. Narmi must enable the allow_billpay_from_account feature flag.

3. Newly added accounts must be automatically approved in the iPay platform—go to How to Approve Accounts for more information.
   

How to Approve Accounts

For new accounts selected by a user to be usable for Bill Pay, they must have an "Approved" status in iPay. We only support the automatic approval method to approve accounts. This requires your institution’s consent. With automatic approval, any new checking account added for a user via the API will be automatically approved as a source account.

To enable automatic approval:

• If your institution is contracted with iPay directly, you must contact iPay directly and request the AutoApproveAccts  API setting be turned on.

• If your institution is contracted through Narmi for iPay:

  1. You can contact iPay and request the AutoApproveAccts API setting be turned on.
     OR

  2. Your Narmi Relationship Manager will turn on the setting for you.

Note: Narmi does not support this feature for institutions that have the AutoApproveAccts setting turned off (manual approval).

How New Accounts Are Registered

The following steps are used to register new accounts in the transfer flow:

1. When a payment is initiated with a selected “From” account, Narmi checks if this account (using its MICR or account number) is already registered on iPay.

2. If found, Narmi uses the account's existing PayFromId (iPay's identifier) to process the payment.

3. If the account is not registered, Narmi makes a request to add the checking account to iPay. It then retrieves the new account's PayFromId for the transfer.

Note: By default, all newly added funding accounts will be in a "Pending" state. If a user attempts to make a payment using an account that is “Pending,” the following error message appears: "There was an error, please try again shortly."