Customer bank statement references

This article provides a guide to the references shown on customer (payer) bank statements for payments collected through GoCardless.

Please note that this is a guide only. Whilst these are the references provided to banks when collecting payment from customers' bank accounts, we are not able to guarantee that the same reference will appear on their bank statement in its entirety.

Please note the following for the table below:

Standard payer references are partly comprised of the merchant name you entered in the GoCardless dashboard in the 'Add your brand' section' and this can be a useful indicator for your customer to understand who they are paying.

IMPORTANT: The following applies to BACS, SEPA & Autogiro mandates if you’re using a partner integration.

If you’re currently using a partner integration, you will need to take additional steps to match your new customer mandates once your Service User Number (SUN) is set up to ensure your payment collection isn’t interrupted.

When the SUN is changed, the existing mandates are silently cancelled (i.e. without a customer email) from the old scheme identifier and silently set up on the new one.

If the integration you’re using can handle mandate-replaced events, then the mandate IDs will be updated automatically in their application. Otherwise, the mandates will need to be matched to the customer record manually. We recommend reaching out to the partner integration you’re using to confirm this.

SCHEME	SCHEME REGION (CUSTOMER LOCATION)	STANDARD PAYER REFERENCES	PAYER REFERENCES if you choose Merchant Name on Payer Bank Statements feature
ACH	United States	GC: [Merchant name] Reference field = [GoCardless random string] Individual identification = [GoCardless random string] + [payment reference]	[Merchant name] Reference field = [Merchant prefix (2 characters)] + [GoCardless random string] Individual identification = [GoCardless random string] + [payment reference]
Autogiro	Sweden	G [Merchant name]-[unique reference]	[BANKGIRONUMMER_NAME]-[Merchant name]-[unique reference]
Bacs	United Kingdom	GOCARDLESS-[Merchant name]-[Mandate reference]	[SUN_NAME] [Mandate reference]-[Payment reference]
BECS	Australia	GOCARDLESS-[Merchant name]-[Mandate reference]-[Payment reference]	[MERCHANT_NAME]-[Mandate reference]-[Payment reference]
BECS NZ	New Zealand	GOCARDLESS Reference field = [Payment reference] Particulars field = [merchant name] Code field = [unique reference]	MERCHANT NAME Reference field = [Payment reference] Particulars field = [empty] Code field = [unique reference]
Betalingsservice	Denmark	(BS) GOCARDLESS-[Payment reference]	(BS) [PBS_NAME]-[Payment reference]
PAD	Canada	GoCardless	[Merchant_name]
SEPA	Eurozone	GOCARDLESS-[Mandate reference]-[Payment reference]	GC re [CID_NAME]-[Mandate reference]-[Payment reference]

Character limits

ACH

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	16	16	16
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	10	10	10

AUTOGIRO

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	12	12	12
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	12	12	12

BACS

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	18	18	18
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	18	18	18

BECS

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	10	16	16
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	18	18	18

BECS NZ

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	20	20	20
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	12	12	12

BETALINGSSERVICE

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	38	38	38
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	30	30	30

PAD

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	15	15	15
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	No reference field available

SEPA

	STANDARD	PLUS	PRO/CUSTOM
Merchant Name Character Limit	70	70	70
Additional Reference Field Character Limit	140	140	140