Withdrawal statuses

Withdrawal processing statuses

1. You create a withdrawal. Your balance goes down by the withdrawal amount plus fee. INITIALISED

   1. We might internally review the transaction. INITIALISED-> REVIEWING

   2. If review goes well it will become pending. REVIEWING→ PENDING

   3. Otherwise it gets cancelled. REVIEWING→ CANCELLED

2. The transaction is sent to the recipient bank for processing. INITIALISED → PENDING

3. PENDING →

   • CONFIRMED - the recipient bank has the money now. Does not mean the beneficiary account number was credited though. Mostly FINAL status. Except when bank decides to return the funds, the withdrawal gets refunded (see step 4).

   • FAILED - NOT FINAL status. Depending on the processing error we have three scenarios now.

     • REFUNDED - see step 4 below.

     • CANCELLED - manual action. Your balance goes up by the amount, Flash Payments keeps the fee. FINAL status.

     • PENDING - rare case - retrying. Sometimes it might work. Go to item 3.

4. The recipient bank decided to return this transaction back to Flash Payments.CONFIRMED → FAILED → REFUNDED - usual way - automatic refunding. Your balance goes up by the withdrawal amount, Flash Payments keeps the fee. FINAL status.

The REVIEWING is an optional action by Flash Payments Compliance team. Occasionally we pick some transactions for extended AML/CT review. Most transactions do not ever get into the REVIEWING status.

Most common status transitions

Happy path

INITIALISED→REVIEWING→PENDING→CONFIRMED

Unhappy paths

Recipient bank accepts the payout but then returns it:

INITIALISED→PENDING→CONFIRMED→FAILED→REFUNDED

Recipient bank rejects the payout:

INITIALISED→PENDING→FAILED→REFUNDED

Flash Payments Compliance team rejects the payout:

INITIALISED→REVIEWING→CANCELLED

Testing/simulating unhappy paths

Typically, you want to adapt your system to handle the following common withdrawal scenarios:

1. Too long in the REVIEWING status

If your withdrawal is in this status this means that we are doing an internal review of it. It happens occasionally when you trigger our monitoring rules. Also, this means that we have sent your Compliance Team (or else) an email message requesting more information. You must respond. In other words, if there is a delay - it's on you. Because Flash Payments delivers all your transactions in real-time 24/7.

Please always provide accurate sender and recipient information, including the full address, to prevent delays associated with internal compliance reviews on our side.

Sender and recipient addresses are automatically validated when a transaction is created. If the address cannot be verified, the transaction will be flagged for review by our Compliance team, resulting in processing delays. To help ensure smooth and timely processing, please provide complete and accurate address details.

You can simulate the behaviour. Your externalReference must include this text: HALT_AML. For example: "testing HALT_AML attempt 2". The withdrawal will get stuck in REVIEWING forever.

2. Fails AML and gets cancelled

We checked the data you sent us for withdrawal. We didn't like it. So we cancel it immediately.

You can simulate the behaviour. Your externalReference must include this text: FAIL_AML. For example: "testing FAIL_AML attempt 4". The withdrawal will be cancelled next moment after you submit it.

3. Recipient bank rejects the money

A common scenario in the Australian domestic payment system involves a transaction that appears successful initially, but is later reversed by the recipient’s bank—sometimes days after processing. This can happen for various reasons, such as an invalid or closed account number, an account in the wrong currency, or other account-related issues.

You can simulate the behaviour. Your externalReference must include this text: FAIL_ACC. For example: "testing FAIL_ACC attempt 8". The withdrawal will be completed, and next moment failed and refunded.