ACH Payment Limits for New Stripe Accounts

When your Stripe account is new, both Stripe and the bank may automatically flag larger-than-usual ACH transactions as potentially fraudulent. This isn’t a reflection on your school — it’s simply because there hasn’t been much payment history on the account yet.

This is a normal part of Stripe’s risk and fraud prevention process and happens to all new merchants. Over time, as your account processes more successful transactions, Stripe and the bank will build a payment history for you, which makes it easier to approve higher ACH limits.

Why This Matters

New accounts often start with an ACH weekly limit (commonly around $10,000 per week).
Even if your typical weekly volume is low, most schools collect tuition in a single “tuition week” each month, which can exceed this cap.
If the cap is exceeded, Stripe may pause payouts or block certain ACH transactions until a review is complete. It won't stop you from being able to collect payments, but it may cause delays.

How to Avoid Disruptions

We strongly recommend that you submit an ACH limit increase request before your first tuition collection week.

Steps to Request an ACH Limit Increase

Step 1: Log in to your Stripe dashboard, click the Question mark (?) in the top right corner, and choose Contact Support. Emailing them from the dashboard is much faster than chat and gets escalated more quickly. See video below.

Important: You should select "Send Us An Email" instead of chatting with a rep. Email is faster, and they escalate it to the right team.

Step 2: Send the following email:

Subject: Urgent Request for ACH Weekly Limit Increase

Hello,

My name is [Your Name], and I am the [Your Position] at [School Name]. We are a Onespot school. Our Stripe account number is [acct_xxxxxxxxxxxxx]. We are requesting an ACH weekly limit increase in order to take tuition payments via Stripe.

We are a [School Type, e.g., Montessori School] in [City, State]. Here is our website: [School Website].

We process around [$X] per year (over [X months]), which equates to around [$X] per month. As a school, we primarily collect tuition in a single “tuition week” each month, which can exceed our current ACH cap. Because of this, we are requesting an ACH limit increase of [$X] per week in order to process our parents’ tuition payments without delays to our school.

We are a new customer to Stripe and need to expedite this request in order to take payments for the school year.

Thank you,

[Your Name]

[Your Contact Information]

Step 3: Wait for application— this usually takes 24–48 hours. Stripe will request additional information, like recent financial statements or proof of expected transaction volume. The application might take 10 minutes.

Step 4: Wait for approval — this usually takes a few business days (including Saturdays). Stripe may request additional information, like recent financial statements or proof of expected transaction volume.

Helpful Links

💡 Recommendation: All new schools using ACH with Stripe should request a limit increase as soon as possible, even if they don’t expect to hit the cap right away. This ensures tuition collection runs smoothly without delays or blocked payments.