This article explains how to enable the direct debit payment method for countries that are members of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). After selecting goods or services, customers reach the merchant’s checkout. When selecting SEPA Direct Debit, customers enter their IBAN/BIC information, after which the amount will be automatically debited from the user’s bank account. Once the payment has been submitted, the merchant receives a URL notification and the purchase can be delivered.
| Supported customer countries | AT, BE, CY, DE, EE, ES, FI, FR, GR, IE, IT, LT, LU, LV, MC, MT, NL, PT, SI, SK |
| Supported currencies | EUR |
| Refunds |
Only Payouts are supported (permitted for up to 365 days). |
| Chargebacks |
Payments may be subject to chargebacks. |
| Zero-authorisation |
Not supported. |
| Recurring payments |
Not supported. |
Configuration
- To enable this payment method on your account, please get in touch with your account manager.
A test sandbox account will be provided, which you will need when testing your implementation. - Modify your POST to Payment Pages as needed:
Field name Required during payment session
(Either included in POST by merchant or entered by customer on Payment Pages)
Required in POST Description billingcountryiso2a Yes No The country entered for the billing address, using ISO2A format. billingemail Yes No The billing email address. This can then be used for correspondence with the customer. Maximum length of 255 (maximum of 64 characters before the ”@” symbol). billingfirstname Yes No The billing first name. billinglastname Yes No The billing last name. iban Yes No The customer’s IBAN.
Our integration of SEPA Direct Debits only supports one-off payments.
Notifications
Once a payment has been authorised, funds will be settled at a later time, as determined by the customer's bank.
The settlement notification may not be sent immediately after processing the payment.
In the unlikely event that payment is still pending settlement after 7 days (settlestatus “10”), this will be scheduled for investigation and we will contact you with further information.
Before you begin testing, we recommend that you contact our Support Team and request that rules are enabled on your account, which submit URL notifications to your system in the following scenarios:
- When a payment is authorised.
- When funds have been settled.
Configuring the authorisation notification
We recommend including at least the following fields in your authorisation notification:
- Acquirer Response Message (acquirerresponsemessage)
- Base Amount (baseamount) (e.g. £10.50 is “1050”)*
- Main Amount (mainamount) (e.g. £10.50 is “10.50”)*
- Billing Country (billingcountryiso2a)
- Currency (currencyiso3a)
- Error Code (errorcode)
- Live Status (livestatus)
- Order Reference (orderreference)
- Payment Type (paymenttypedescription)
- Request Type (requesttypedescription)
- Settle Status (settlestatus)
- Site Reference (sitereference)
- Transaction Reference (transactionreference)
- Transaction Started Timestamp (transactionstartedtimestamp)
*Please choose your preferred format.
Configuring the settlement notification
We recommend including the following fields in your settlement notification:
- Settle Status (settlestatus)
- Site Reference (sitereference)
- Transaction Reference (transactionreference)
Check the notification
You will need to check the contents of each notification received and respond accordingly by following the processes outlined in our URL notifications documentation. In particular, you will need to look at the updated settlestatus value:
- On authorisation: If the settlestatus is “0”, “1” or “10”, the payment has been authorised and you are not required to take further action at this time. However, values of “2” or “3” indicate funds are not scheduled for settlement (suspended and cancelled, respectively).
- On settlement: If the settlestatus has been updated to “100”, this indicates that the funds have been settled. Alternatively, if this has been updated to “3”, this indicates there has been a problem and the payment was subsequently cancelled.
Cancelled transactions (settlestatus “3”) may be settled at a later time. In situations where the customer has completed the steps required to fulfil the payment, the settlestatus is updated to “100” to indicate the funds have been transferred to your account.
If you have contacted the Support Team to configure settlement notifications (as described above), you will be notified when this occurs.
Testing
You will need to test your solution before you can begin processing live payments. Test transactions are processed through your test Site Reference.
Requirements
You will need to contact our Support Team, providing your test account details. We will then configure your test site reference to connect directly to an external testing environment.
When performing test transactions, your browser will be redirected to the testing environment to simulate a payment. Other than this, the process will be exactly the same as processing live payments.
Payouts
It is possible to perform SEPA Direct Debit Payouts using our API.
