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Pay by Bank (also known as Account to Account or A2A) is a bank transfer payment method. Trust Payments provides Pay by Bank with a processing partner authorised by the financial regulators in the UK and EEA (European Economic Area). When opting to pay with Pay by Bank on your checkout, customers will be redirected to a page hosted by our processing partner, which will prompt them to select their bank. The bank will determine the next steps undertaken by the customer to authorise the payment, but typically the customer will be asked to perform some form of SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), e.g. reviewing and approving the order using a banking app installed on their device. Once they agree to the payment, the customer will finally be redirected back to your website. Authorised funds will be transferred to your virtual settlement account.
| Supported customer countries | GB |
| Supported currencies | GBP |
| Refunds | Not supported. |
| Chargebacks | Payments are not subject to chargebacks. |
| Zero-authorisation | Not supported. |
| Recurring payments | Not supported. |
Requirements and Setup
- Before you get started, you will need to contact our Support Team and request that Pay by Bank is enabled on your account.
- As part of this process, we will work with you to set up a URL notification for settlement. This is needed to notify your system that the funds have been settled into your virtual settlement account, and you can safely dispatch goods and services to customers.
- For testing purposes, we will first configure your test site reference for Pay by Bank. The test site reference will be connected to the Pay by Bank sandbox environment powered by a trusted third party, allowing you to test your solution before going live. Once you are ready to go live, we can then enable Pay by Bank on your live site reference.
- You don't need to include any extra fields in the HTTPS POST when redirecting the browser to the hosted Payment Pages. Provided that you follow the instructions in our quick-start guide, the "Pay by Bank" button should be visible on the checkout after it has been enabled on your account.
Do not display the Trust Payments-hosted Payment Pages within an iframe. This will prevent the content necessary for the successful operation of Pay by Bank from being rendered correctly, which can ultimately prevent the payment from being completed successfully.
Process overview
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Redirect to Payment Pages
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When the customer is ready to pay, your website redirects the customer to the Payment Pages hosted by Trust Payments. They select "Pay by Bank" from the options presented.
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Redirect to bank login page
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Once Pay by Bank has been selected, Trust Payments redirects the customer’s browser to a page hosted by a Trust Payments processing partner, which prompts the customer to select their bank.
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As part of this, the customer will be further redirected to pages hosted by their bank, where they will be prompted to sign in, review the order details and authorise the transaction.
When testing, the browser will display the sandbox environment. To complete a test transaction, the user needs to play the role of customer and follow the instructions displayed on screen. This will typically involve entering test credentials supplied by your account manager and/or selecting the desired transaction outcome from options presented on screen.
Do not enter your real card or banking information while testing!
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Finishing the session
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Once the customer has finished on the pages hosted by their
bank,
their browser is returned to either:
- The Payment Pages hosted by Trust Payments (default), OR;
- If you've configured a redirect rule, this takes precedence and the customer is redirected back to your website. Learn more about custom redirects.
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Once the customer has finished on the pages hosted by their
bank,
their browser is returned to either:
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Settlement notification
Remember that you will only receive notification of settlement if configured by our Support Team. To enable notifications, they will set up separate rules for your test and live site references that are triggered following the settlement of Pay by Bank transactions.-
Your server will need to listen for settlement notifications sent by Trust Payments. These will come in the form of POST requests that require your server to respond with an HTTP 200 OK response as soon as possible to confirm receipt.
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The most important fields to check in the notification are:
- transactionreference — Unique reference assigned by Trust Payments that identifies the transaction.
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settlestatus — The transaction state:
- If settlestatus=100, funds have reached your virtual settlement account, pending transfer to your bank, and it is now considered safe to dispatch the goods or services ordered by the customer.
- If settlestatus=3, an error has occurred that has prevented settlement. You must inform the customer that there has been a problem with their order and offer assistance to resolve the issue to their satisfaction.
- At this step, we recommend sending an email to the customer informing them of the update to the status of their order. e.g. If settlestatus=100, the customer can be informed that the product they ordered has been dispatched.
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Settlement
Settling
If settlestatus = 10,
the customer has been redirected to their bank to authorise the transaction.
Settled
If settlestatus = 100,
the funds are now in your virtual settlement account following authorisation.
Cancelled
If settlestatus = 3,
the customer declined to authorise the transaction (or an error occurred).
In this context, when discussing the virtual settlement account, we are referring to a dedicated account held by a Trust Payments partner and managed on your behalf, which is used to collect and hold your transaction funds before they are disbursed to your nominated bank account. If the customer has successfully authorised the transaction with their bank, the transaction will update to Settle Status = 100 once the funds have reached the virtual settlement account.
Once the Settle Status for a given transaction is 100, you can expect funds to be transferred within 24 hours, typically overnight.
As part of the standard Pay by Bank flow, the customer will need to sign into their online banking account or banking app, review details of the purchase and authorise the transfer. Like with any checkout process, it is entirely possible for the customer to be delayed or fail to complete these steps. For example, they might have forgotten their bank PIN or password, or they may have simply changed their mind.
Regardless of the reason, the customer can always try again later, which would create a new transaction with a different Transaction Reference. Pay by Bank transactions that have been abandoned in Settle Status = 10 will be automatically cancelled after 7 days.
No, although the customer is always free to change their mind and select another payment method or exit the checkout entirely before they authorise the transfer.
Managing your transactions in Portal
As with any other payment method, all Pay by Bank transactions can be viewed and managed within Portal. When working with Pay by Bank transactions, please be aware of the following:
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 and request that your test site reference is configured to connect directly to the sandbox environment. Testing frameworks and sandboxes will be arranged individually with each of our participating merchants.
When performing test transactions, the browser will be redirected to the sandbox environment to simulate the Pay by Bank checkout process. We will provide you with test credentials needed to proceed through the interface.
