Custom payment references
Please note: Availability of plans and features may vary by region. Please consult our Product Bundle Description to read the full details.
Important: If you are using the ‘Merchant name on the payer bank statement’ add-on, any UK customers (paying through the Bacs Direct Debit scheme) that signed up prior to using the ‘Merchant name on the payer bank statement’ add-on will have a mandate reference that is 18 characters long. This means that you cannot use custom payment references for these customers unless they authorise a new Direct Debit.
Any customers that authorise their Direct Debit after you have upgraded your account will have a mandate reference of 7 characters which is hyphenated with the payment reference. The hyphen takes up one character. This means you can create payment reference up to 10 characters long.
This information applies to customers using our ‘Merchant name on the payer bank statement’ add-on.
A benefit of this add-on feature is that references can be added to individual payments to make them more easily identifiable for customers when viewing their bank statements.
You can find an overview of bank statement references and the character limits for each scheme here.
Adding custom payment references
In order for you to add custom payment references, please request this feature by raising a ticket with our Support team.
Once this feature has been enabled to your account, custom payment references can be added to payments via three payment creation methods within the dashboard. You can find the process for each below.
One-off payments / individual subscriptions
When creating a one-off payment as a merchant using the add-on feature Merchant name on the payer bank statement, you will find an additional field in the payment creation window.
Subscription templates
Adding custom payment references to a subscription template is very similar to the process for one-off payments or individual subscriptions. You will find an additional field in the plan creation window.
To edit a subscription template reference:
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Navigate to the Subscription templates page of your dashboard
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Select the subscription template
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Click the three dots in the top right corner and select Edit
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Edit the reference and when you're ready, hit Save changes
Bulk submission uploads
Within the CSV bulk upload file used to create your customers’ payments in bulk, you can add a column titled payment.reference to specify payment references for customer bank statements.
This title should be added in the next available column.
Restrictions
The number of characters available varies between schemes. You're able to view the number of characters available to the right of the payment reference entry field text box.