Check whether the connected account and its external account are eligible for Instant Payouts by retrieving the account and inspecting settings.payouts.instant_payouts_enabled or by attempting a payout and handling the not_eligible error
Verify the external account supports instant payouts — eligible debit cards and some bank accounts are supported; retrieve the connected account's external_accounts and check the available_payout_methods array for instant
Create an Instant Payout via POST /v1/payouts with method=instant on behalf of the connected account using the Stripe-Account header; funds typically arrive within minutes
Retrieve the payout object to confirm arrival_date and status; Instant Payouts are subject to a per-payout and daily volume cap — check current limits in Stripe's documentation
Handle instant_payouts_limit_exceeded errors by falling back to a standard payout with method=standard and communicating the delay to the connected account
Monitor for payout.failed webhooks, which can occur if the debit card or bank account is closed or does not support the credit push — retrieve failure_code for programmatic error handling
Known gotchas
Instant Payouts incur an additional fee on top of standard payout costs — consult current Stripe pricing as the fee is a percentage of the payout amount and may change; build fee disclosure into your connected account UI
Instant Payout eligibility depends on the connected account's country, the external account type, and platform-level enablement — not all countries or payment methods support instant payouts; check the eligibility matrix in current docs
Daily and per-payout volume caps apply at the platform level across all connected accounts — if your platform has high payout volume, you may hit caps; contact Stripe to request limit increases before scaling
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp