SEPA Direct Debit Transfers

Introduction

SEPA Direct Debit Transfers enjoy a particular popularity in the Eurozone, as they're used to transfer money easily between bank accounts denominated in Euro. The service is available in 34 SEPA Union countries.

Carrying out a payment is like using a credit card:

• Transfers are performed entirely within the banking system.
• Your customers simply enter the IBAN into the form and authorize the transaction.

Use case – adding a bank account

All the customer needs in order to initiate a SEPA Direct Debit payment is the account owner's name, their International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and Business Identifier Code (BIC, also known as a SWIFT code).

To create a SEPA payment, you first need to create a bank_account object in Straal. This way, you won't have to provide the account's full details, just its ID.

If you wish to use the Straal API, you'll need to send a POST request to API endpoint /customers/:customer_id/bank_accounts, where :customer_id needs to be substituted with your customer's ID (see APIref: Create a bank account). In case of new customers, you will have to create a customer object first (see APIref: Create a customer)

Sample request:

{
  "name": "John Smith",
  "iban": "DE89370400440532013000",
  "bic": "COBADEFFXXX",
  "origin_ipaddr": "91.17.133.219",
}

To see a sample response, see APIref: Create a bank account.

Learn how to perform a SEPA transfer: APIref: Create a transaction for a bank account.