Why can’t I make ANOTHER ePayment? The system says I have one pending….

ePayments at Elkins Apartments are bank drafts. You may make an ePayment for one amount and then try to make another one soon thereafter for another amount, and the system says “Not so fast!”

Okay, it doesn’t literally say “Not so fast!” but it does tell you you cannot make another ePayment while you have one pending.

So if there is already an ePayment sitting in your account for you personally with the status of pending, you can’t do another ePayment until that one clears.

For any payment to clear, it has to first be initiated by you, then it goes to our payment processor, then it clears your bank then it goes back to the payment processor, then it clears OUR bank. So you might login your own bank account and see that indeed the payment has cleared your bank but it hasn’t yet reached our bank. Once it reaches our bank and completely flushes the pending one from the system then it will let you make another one.

Typically, the entire process takes 3-4 days — I’ve actually seen it take 5-6 even though the payment processor says it should be three or four.

What’s the answer to your next likely question: How do I avoid this problem?

The best way to avoid it is to make sure that when you make an ePayment, you pay for everything you have upcoming in the next week or so, and not make one payment and then plan on making another payment within 24/72 hours.

Is there anyway around the limit of 1 pending payment?

Unfortunately, this is the nature of ePayments. There is no way to expedite the process and no way to circumvent the waiting. You would in most cases run into this if you do ePayments for a credit card bill or most other vendors. With a payment pending, most systems just don’t like to let you try to toss another one in.

In special circumstances, we may be able to cancel the pending payment and allow you to initiate another one; however, this may be subject to an additional charge. And, if cancelled then the date of payment, used for determining late payment status, would become the date for the new payment, which may affect late fees/additional rent charges, etc.