Guides

Direct Debit AU

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Nium One platform clients in Australia can accept Bulk Electronics Clearing System (BECS) Direct Debit payments from business customers with an Australian bank account.

You can use Direct Debit as many times as you want. Direct Debit is a non-real-time payment method from payment creation, to processing, and acknowledgment of its success or failure.

For more information, see Direct Debit guide.

Prerequisites

These are the requirements for this funding mechanism:

  • Your customer needs to have a bank account in Australia with BECS Direct Debit enabled and a Nium AUD wallet.
  • Your customer needs to authorize the Direct Debit mandate to debit from their bank account and accept Nium's terms and conditions (T&C).
  • Your customer needs to have enough money in their added bank account to start your transactions.
  • Your customer is the only person who can authorize the Direct Debit mandate for their bank account.
  • Your customer needs to be a corporate customer.

Configuration

Nium approves your Direct Debit mandate setup pages. You can't change these pages without notifying Nium in advance. You need to collect the Direct Debit mandate from your customer, displaying the BECS Mandate to your customer while collecting their bank account details.

Direct Debit Endpoints

The following APIs support the Direct Debit feature:

HTTP methodAPI nameAction
POSTAdd Funding InstrumentAdd the funding instrument to your customer's wallet to start a Direct Debit transaction. Use this API to add the payer's physical bank account to the customer's wallet so that Direct Debit payments can be initiated against it. Provide the funding instrument's country code, currency code, account number and the BSB code.
GETGet Funding Instrument DetailsGet your customer's funding instrument details for a specific funding instrument ID. It's optional to use this API. The fundingInstrumentId is returned as a response in the Add Funding Instrument API call.
GETGet Funding Instrument ListGet the list of funding instruments registered with your customer. It's optional to use this API.
POSTFund WalletFund into your customer's wallet by selecting the funding channel as a direct_debit transaction. You also need to provide the fundingInstrumentId obtained from the response in the Add Funding Instrument API call. The debit payments appear on your customer's bank statement as Nium.
A diagram showing the AU Direct Debit customer experience.

A diagram showing the AU Direct Debit customer experience.

Payment Flow

  1. Call the Add Funding Instrument API to add your customer’s bank account.
  2. Nium validates the bank details and sends a copy of the mandate to the customer’s registered email address.
  3. After direct debit is set up, call the Fund Wallet API to pull funds from the customer’s bank account and to top up their Nium-issued wallet.

Funds Flow Timeline

Direct Debit is a non-real-time payment method and can take 3 days from payment creation to processing, and acknowledgment of its success or failure.

A diagram showing the AU Direct Debit settlement timing, which takes 3 days.

A diagram showing the AU Direct Debit settlement timing, which takes 3 days.

Mandates

You need to get your customer's permission to debit their bank account through a mandate. A mandate is an authorization that the customer provides that gives Nium permission to debit their account. The mandate isn't physically signed by the customer. Once Nium receives an instruction from you via API, it's assumed that your customer has duly agreed to the mandate.

After you have that, Nium notifies your customer every time you debit their bank account before each payment. Nium is the service provider to debit the funds from the customer’s bank account.

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IMPORTANT

Your customer may cancel a mandate at any time by emailing their bank or financial institution. Canceling a mandate invalidates any future direct debit requests that you issue using this mandate. If you want to accept additional payments from your customer, you need to establish a new mandate with them.

Chargebacks

Your customer can initiate a dispute with their bank after the funds are credited to their Nium wallet for up to 7 years. If their bank agrees, the money is pulled from your customer's Nium wallet.

Updated 6 months ago