Direct Debit is a widely used payment method across the globe. Different countries and areas operate under specific schemes; such as Bacs in the UK, SEPA across the Eurozone and BECS in Australia.
GoCardless provides a single point of access to a number of these Direct Debit schemes. You can see a full list of the schemes GoCardless offer here.
The power of our global network is fully unlocked when integrated effectively into business software and processes. That's why we work hard to make it simple for our partners to build and support multiple schemes as part of their integration with GoCardless.
Information on adding a new scheme to your existing partner integration and the associated technical considerations can be found below.
Implementing a new scheme
| API Endpoints | Parameter | Parameter values by Scheme | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacs | SEPA | Autogiro | BECS | Betalingsservice | BECS NZ | PAD | ACH | ||
| Redirect Flows | scheme |
bacs
|
sepa_core
|
autogiro
|
becs
|
betalingsservice
|
becs_nz
|
pad
|
ach
|
| Mandates | |||||||||
| Creditors (scheme identifiers) | |||||||||
| Mandate PDFs | |||||||||
| Events | |||||||||
| Payments |
currency
|
GBP
|
EUR
|
SEK
|
AUD
|
DKK
|
NZD
|
CAD
|
USD
|
| Payouts | |||||||||
| Refunds | |||||||||
| Subscriptions | |||||||||
| Customer Bank Accounts | |||||||||
In addition to scheme and currency there are other endpoints that will need to be considered when adding an additional scheme to an existing integration. Certain items like those listed in the table below may have been hardcoded when building your initial integration. These will need to be changed to variable values that can change to support additional schemes.
| ACTION | PROPERTY / PARAMETER | AVAILABLE RESOURCES |
|---|---|---|
| Create a Creditor Bank Account | Properties | 'country_code' ; 'currency' |
| Parameters | 'iban' or 'account_number' + 'bank_code' + 'branch_code' | |
| Update a Customer | Properties | 'address' (Bacs only) ; 'country_code' ; 'currency' ; 'language' |
| Parameters | 'country_code' ; 'language' | |
| Where applicable... | 'danish_identity_number' / 'swedish_identity_number' | |
| Create a Payment | Properties | 'currency' |
| Parameters | 'currency' | |
| Create a Redirect Flow | Properties | 'scheme' |
| Parameters | 'prefilled_customer' ['language'] | |
| Where applicable... | 'danish_identity_number' / 'swedish_identity_number' | |
| Create a Subscription | Properties | 'currency' |
| Parameters | 'currency' | |
| Create a refund | Properties | 'currency' |
| Perform a Bank Details Lookup | Properties | 'available_debit_schemes' ; 'currency' |
| Parameters | 'iban' or 'account_number' + 'bank_code' + 'branch_code' | |
| Create a mandate PDF | Properties | 'country_code' ; 'scheme' ; 'iban' or 'account_number' + 'bank_code' + 'branch_code' |
| Where applicable... | 'danish_identity_number' / 'swedish_identity_number' |
Partners using Custom Payment Pages only
| ACTION | PROPERTY / PARAMETER | AVAILABLE RESOURCES |
|---|---|---|
| Create a Customer | Properties | 'address' (Bacs only) ; 'country_code' ; 'currency' ; 'language' ; 'region' (ACH only) |
| Parameters | 'bank_code' or 'iban' | |
| Where applicable... | 'danish_identity_number' / 'swedish_identity_number' | |
| Create a Customer Bank Account | Properties | 'country_code' ; 'currency' |
| Parameters | 'country_code' ; 'currency' ; 'iban' or 'account_number' + 'bank_code' + 'branch_code' | |
| Where applicable... | 'account_type' (ACH only) | |
| Create a Mandate | Properties | 'scheme' |
| Parameters | 'scheme' | |
| Where applicable... | 'payer_ip_address' (ACH only) |
Additional Information
Creating Customers
Partners have two options to enable their merchants (users) to set up Direct Debit mandates with their customers;
1. Using the GoCardless redirect flow
- This enables users to use the GoCardless hosted payment pages.
- These pages are fully compliant and have been translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish.
2. Build your own custom payment pages
- Rather than using our ready-made flow, you can build and host your own payment pages.
- Note these need to be approved by our Onboarding team.
Regardless of which option you are currently using, it is important to know which scheme an individual user has access to before attempting to create a customer for a specific scheme.
This can be found by using the Creditors endpoint to list the creditors on a GoCardless account (there should only be one creditor). You can then check the scheme_identifiers array, within which each instance will have a scheme field.
Note, if a merchant doesn't have a scheme enabled on their account, they can make a request to add a new scheme here.
Receiving partner fee payouts
To receive revenue share or app fee payouts for a new scheme, you'll need to ensure that you've added a payout bank account in the currency of that scheme.
To do this, please request the scheme be added to your account here. We can then add the scheme to your GoCardless account, which will then allow you to add a new bank account for that currency. For further details on how to connect the new bank account, please refer to the guide here.