In accordance with state law, all payments (including early and extra payments) on our student loan refinance or private student loans are processed first to any interest that has accrued since the last payment. Earnest calculates interest at a simple daily rate, and you can find out more about that here. After the payment has been applied to the interest accrued, the remaining balance of the payment goes toward the principal balance of your loan.
While the payment may not debit from your payment account on your scheduled payment date, its effective date will be applied to the date the payment was scheduled or received. Here are some things to keep in mind about payment processing times:
- If you are enrolled in Auto Pay, please allow 2 business days from the payment date for the payment to process. The payment effective date will be set to your due date or the date the payment was scheduled.
- Payments scheduled before 11:59 PM EST will be effective from the same date the payment was scheduled. This includes weekends and banking holidays.
- Mailed payments will be applied to your loan from the date the payment was received. Please note, mailed payments are only processed on business days, and can take an additional 2 business days to be applied to your account.
Please note, if you are enrolled in Auto Pay, any manual payments or extra payments will not replace any auto-payments. The same is true for manual or extra payments sent to Earnest by a third party on behalf of an Earnest client.
If you have a personal loan originated by Earnest, your loan is serviced by SST and you’ll want to consult them directly about how your payments will be allocated towards your loan. For information about SST, click here.