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Collecting a payment and receiving the money are separate events. A customer pays and you see a successful payment straight away. The money is then gathered with other payments, divided according to your splits, and paid out on your settlement schedule. This page explains that second stage from a merchant’s point of view, and shows you where to follow it in the dashboard.

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From payment to payout

1

The payment succeeds

The customer pays and the payment reaches success. Vestrapay now records where each part of the amount belongs.
2

The amount is allocated

Each service named in the payment’s distribution is divided among its sub-accounts by its split shares. Everything you did not allocate belongs to your primary settlement account. A payment with no distribution belongs entirely to the primary account.
3

A settlement date is set

Each allocation is given a due date, based on your settlement cycle. It is due at 00:00 West Africa Time on the settlement day, so everything collected on one day is settled together.
4

A settlement is formed

Collections that have reached their due date are grouped into a settlement, with a reference that starts with SETT. It lists every destination account it will pay.
5

The money is paid out

Vestrapay pays each destination account. Legs that need manual settlement are paid and confirmed by Vestrapay’s operations team instead.

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Settlement cycle

Your settlement cycle sets how long after collection the money is due. The usual cycles are T+1, T+2 and T+3, meaning one, two or three days after the day of collection. The cycle that applies to your account is shown on each settlement. The cycle applies to the whole account. You cannot set a different one per payment. To change it, contact tech@vestrapay.com.

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Who receives what

The sums for a single payment are visible on verify, and the combined result across payments is visible on the settlement.

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Who bears the fee

The fee bearer, set in your payment settings or per payment, changes what is settled. When you bear the fee and allocate almost all of a payment to services, the service legs are scaled down proportionally so that the fee can still be deducted. See Distribution.

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Automatic and manual settlement

Most destinations are paid automatically to their bank account. A split can instead be set to Requires manual settlement (TSA), with a 10-digit destination account, as described in Splits. Use it where the payout goes through a process outside the normal bank rails, such as a Treasury Single Account. For these splits:
  • The destination bank is shown as CBN, and the account number as TSA in every merchant-facing view and export. The real number is not shown.
  • Vestrapay confirms receipt after the payout. The settlement is shown as completed once it has been paid, whether automatically or manually.

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Settlement statuses

A settlement as a whole moves through these stages. A single settlement can pay several accounts, so one leg may fail while others succeed. A failed leg is retried automatically up to three times, at intervals that lengthen each time. If it still fails, contact tech@vestrapay.com with the settlement reference.

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Read your settlements in the dashboard

Open Payments → Settlements to see them. The page has two tabs:
  • Completed, for settlements that have been paid out. This is the tab you reconcile against your bank statement.
  • Pending, for settlements that have not yet been paid out.
The page also shows your Primary Settlement Account card. Where your role permits, you can open Update from that card to change the account. See Settlement account. Your team role needs read access to Settlements to see the page.

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Find a settlement

Use the filters on the page to narrow the list, for example by date range, and use search to find a settlement by its reference. The reference starts with SETT, and it is the one to quote when you contact support.

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Open a settlement

Select a settlement to open its detail. It shows the status and totals, the accounts it pays, and a Transaction Log of the collections that funded it. Use the log to trace a payout back to individual payments by their reference.

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Export

Choose Export to download a CSV for reconciliation. Narrow the filters first, because an export is capped at 10,000 rows. The file shows the account number of any manual or TSA destination as TSA.

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What partners see

If you have granted partner access, partners see settlements through their own dashboard. They see only the settlements that paid one of the splits you granted them, one row for each of their own bank accounts, with amounts determined by the view you chose for them. Money paid to other accounts is never added in and is never shown. They have no access to your settlements list, your balance or your primary account.

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Reconciling

  • Match on the reference. Your payment’s reference ties a verify response, a webhook and a ledger line together. The settlement reference ties a payout to your bank statement.
  • Compare totals, not just counts. A settlement’s gross amount, less fees you bear, should equal the net amount.
  • Watch for fallbacks. Any FALLBACK entry on verify means a share went to your primary account instead of the sub-account you intended.
  • Allow for the cycle. A payment collected today is not expected in a settlement until its due date.

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Next

Review or change your primary settlement account.