Electronic Check Payment (ECP) provides another way in (addition to credit/debit cards) for applicants to pay their application fees online. Applicants enter the bank routing number, the account number, and the account holder's name into the online payment form. The application fee is then deducted from their checking acount. No physical check is written. The online payment form advises the applicant to write the application fee amount in his or her check register, just as they would a physical check.
The process is illustrated for the applicant here.
Applications that are submitted with ECP are held by ApplyWeb for seven days after submission. This means that you do not receive the application until seven days after the applicant submits it. This verification period allows ApplyWeb to ensure that the account number is valid and that there are sufficient funds in the applicant's checking account.
Electronic Check Payment and Term Maintenance
Seven days before your application term deadline, ECP is turned off (it's unavailable) for that application term. This avoids having an applicant submit an application, only to find out after your term deadline, that the payment was not successful. Because the ApplyWeb system checks the term deadline to determine whether or not to offer ECP, you must have a term expiration date in Term Mainenance for ECP to be available at all. If you have no term exiration date in Term Maintenance, ECP is unavailable to the applicant.
Because ECP works only with checks drawn on U.S. banks, it is not available for international applications. International applications must be paid for by credit/debit card.
Note: International applications are those that are separately designated as international on your application menu. The code for international applications usually ends in i.