How to Fill Out and Submit an Electronic Payment Request Form

An electronic payment request form authorizes a company or agency to send money directly to your bank account instead of mailing a check. To fill one out, you need your legal name and address, your taxpayer identification number, your bank’s ACH routing number, your account number, and your account type, plus a W-9 and a voided check or bank letter as backup. Get any of those pieces wrong and the payment either bounces, lands in the wrong account, or triggers automatic tax withholding you weren’t expecting.

What You Need Before You Start

Pull these together before you open the form. Missing one piece usually means starting over.

Your full legal name and address, written exactly as they appear on your bank account. A mismatch between the name on the form and the name on the account is one of the most common reasons payments get rejected.
Your Taxpayer Identification Number: a Social Security Number for individuals, an Employer Identification Number for businesses. The payer needs it to report payments to the IRS.
Your bank’s nine-digit routing number. It’s printed on the bottom-left of a check, listed on your bank’s website, or available by phone from the bank.
Your account number. Verify every digit. Transposing one sends the money somewhere else or bounces the transfer.
Account type, checking or savings. ACH transfers route differently depending on type, and the wrong selection can fail the payment.

No checkbook and can’t find the routing number? Ask your bank for a verification letter. These confirm your account number, routing number, account type, and the date the account was opened, which is everything the payer needs to set up the transfer.

Filling In the Form

Most of these forms follow the same layout. The top captures your identity: name, address, phone, email. The middle captures your banking information. The bottom asks for a signature or electronic certification and the date.

Accuracy on the TIN field matters beyond just getting paid on time. If the number you provide doesn’t match IRS records, the paying organization may be required to withhold 24 percent of your payment as backup withholding and send it to the IRS on your behalf.¹ You get that money back when you file your return, but it ties up your cash in the meantime.

For routing number, use the ACH routing number, not a wire transfer routing number. Some banks publish different numbers for each. The number printed on your checks is almost always the ACH number. If you’re pulling it from a bank website or app, look for the field specifically labeled “direct deposit” or “ACH” routing number.

Documents to Attach

Form W-9

Almost every U.S. organization that will pay you $600 or more asks for a completed W-9 alongside the payment request. The W-9 provides your correct TIN so the payer can report payments to the IRS on an information return.² U.S. citizens and resident aliens use the W-9. Foreign payees use a W-8BEN instead, because payments to nonresident aliens may be subject to a separate 30 percent withholding under Section 1441 of the Internal Revenue Code.³

If you’ve applied for an EIN but don’t have it yet, you can write “Applied For” in the TIN field, sign, date, and submit. Expect the payer to withhold 24 percent from your payments until you provide the actual number.²

Voided Check or Bank Letter

A voided check proves the routing and account numbers belong to you. Write “VOID” across the front of a blank check in large letters and attach it. No checks? A bank verification letter on institutional letterhead works the same way, confirming your name, account number, routing number, and account type.

Invoices or Receipts

If the payment is for services rendered or expense reimbursement, attach itemized invoices or original receipts. For employee reimbursements, the IRS requires that the employer’s plan meet three conditions to keep the reimbursement tax-free: the expense must have a business connection, the employee must substantiate it with documentation within 60 days of paying it, and any advance exceeding actual expenses must be returned within a reasonable period.⁴ Reimbursements that don’t meet those standards get treated as taxable wages.

How to Submit the Form

How you send it depends on the payer. Three channels cover almost every case:

A secure online portal. The most common method. You log in, fill the fields directly, upload supporting documents, and submit. The system usually generates a confirmation number on the spot.
Encrypted email. Some smaller organizations accept forms sent as encrypted attachments to a dedicated accounts payable address. Never send banking information in an unencrypted email.
An internal HR or finance system. Employees setting up direct deposit usually complete the form inside their company’s payroll platform, which routes the data to the payroll processor.

Save the confirmation number or screenshot the confirmation page. If the payment doesn’t show up on schedule, that confirmation is the fastest way to trace what happened.

When the Money Actually Arrives

Most electronic payment requests move through the Automated Clearing House network, which processes payments in batches. The ACH network operates 23 and a quarter hours every banking day and settles payments four times per banking day.⁵

Standard ACH credits can be scheduled for the next business day or two business days out. Same Day ACH is available and settles three times per day, at 1:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time.⁶ The per-payment cap for Same Day ACH is currently $1 million, with an increase to $10 million scheduled for September 2027.⁷

In practice, the time between submitting your form and seeing the deposit depends less on ACH speed than on the payer’s internal processing. A large corporation might batch requests weekly. A government agency might take two to three weeks to review and approve. Ask about the processing cycle. That’s usually what determines when you actually get paid.

Fixing a Mistake After You Submit

If you catch a mistake after submitting, like a transposed digit in your account number, contact the payer’s finance department immediately. The sooner you flag it, the more options they have. An ACH payment that lands in the wrong account or for the wrong amount can be reversed, but the originator must transmit the reversal within five banking days of the original settlement date.⁸

Reversals are only permitted for specific reasons: a duplicate payment, an incorrect dollar amount, payment sent to the wrong recipient, or a payment dated incorrectly.⁸ After five banking days, recovery gets significantly harder and may require the receiving bank’s cooperation. That’s why verifying the numbers before you hit submit matters more than it does with a paper check, where you can stop payment with a phone call.

Avoiding Payment Fraud

These forms are a prime target for business email compromise schemes, which have caused over $55 billion in reported losses since 2013.⁹ A typical attack: a scammer gains access to a company email account through phishing, watches the inbox to learn who handles payments, then sends a convincing request to change the banking details on file, redirecting the next payment to the scammer’s account.¹⁰

Red flags when you receive or process one of these requests:

Urgent language about banking changes. A vendor suddenly claiming their account is “under audit” and asking to be paid at a different account is a classic BEC tactic.¹⁰
Slightly altered email addresses. Scammers register domains that look nearly identical to the real sender, swapping a lowercase “l” for a “1” or adding a single letter.
Pressure to bypass normal procedures. Any request to skip verification or rush a payment outside the regular approval chain warrants a phone call to the requester at a known number, not the number in the suspicious email.

Federal banking regulators recommend that financial institutions and their business customers use multi-factor authentication on any system involved in initiating electronic payments.¹¹ If your organization’s payment portal only uses a password, that’s a vulnerability worth raising with IT or finance. Before you submit, confirm you’re using the payer’s official portal or a verified email address, not a link someone forwarded to you.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 15 (2026), (Circular E), Employer’s Tax Guide
2
Internal Revenue Service. Form W-9 (Rev. March 2024)
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 1441 – Withholding of Tax on Nonresident Aliens
4
Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Ruling 2003-106
5
Nacha. ACH Payments Fact Sheet
6
Federal Reserve Financial Services. FedACH Processing Schedule
7
Nacha. Same Day ACH Per Payment Limit to Increase to $10 Million
8
Nacha. ACH Network Rules – Reversals and Enforcement
9
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Business Email Compromise – The $55 Billion Scam
10
United States Secret Service. Business Email Compromise
11
Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Authentication and Access to Financial Institution Services and Systems