SEPA and SEPA Instant bank transfers on one API.
BazPay is a single API for instant bank payments across the EU, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Send and receive SEPA Credit Transfers, fall back to SCT above the SEPA ceiling, and pull recurring collections under a signed SEPA Direct Debit mandate — all from the same REST endpoint that runs your cards.
Built for EU, UK and Commonwealth e-commerce, subscription software and professional-services businesses that want bank-rail settlement without stitching together a provider per country.
Why merchants add SEPA alongside cards
Bank rails and card rails have different economics. Merchants that live in euros pay-in and pay-out on SEPA for the ticket sizes where the fee model matters most.
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Real settlement without card fees
A SEPA transfer moves money bank-to-bank without card scheme interchange. Bank pulls and payouts cost a flat per-transaction fee, not a percentage.
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SEPA, day and night
SEPA payments clear in seconds, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The response returns the accepted status inside the same request cycle.
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One API for pay-in and pay-out
Merchant collections, refunds, direct debits and merchant payouts all sit behind the same REST endpoint and the same signed-webhook catalogue as your card traffic.
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Account-native record keeping
Every payment carries the counter-party key or account number, the end-to-end reference and the reason code. Finance teams reconcile from primary evidence, not from a synthetic ID.
The SEPA schemes on one contract
Four scheme families run through one connection: SEPA transfer, SEPA, SEPA Direct Debit and the settlement account/reporting rails that reconcile them.
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SCT
SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT)
The classic European bank transfer. One-off movements between two accounts, settled on the same business-day cycle. Use it for large-ticket pay-ins above the SEPA ceiling and for scheduled merchant payouts where instant is not required.
- Pay-in
- Payout
- Refund
- Bulk file
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SCT Inst
SEPA Instant payments
Real-time payments reachable at every institution that has joined SEPA Instant, plus the equivalent domestic rails we run in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Confirmation lands in seconds, so orders release without a wait.
- Real-time
- 24/7/365
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SDD
SEPA Direct Debit (Core)
Pull funds from a customer account under a signed SEPA Direct Debit mandate, or a BACS mandate in the UK. Used for subscription billing, membership renewals and consented recurring invoices.
- Recurring
- One-off
- Mandate lifecycle
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Rails
Keys, accounts and reporting rails
IBAN and account-number validation on capture, camt.053 daily statements and camt.054 debit/credit notifications feed your reconciliation stack.
- IBAN
- camt.053
- camt.054
Pay-in initiation via user's bank on open banking. Merchant fund distribution on payouts. Recurring pulls on recurring billing.
The life of one SEPA payment
Six stages sit between the API call and the reconciled statement entry. Each stage is visible in the dashboard and each stage change fires a signed webhook.
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Create
Post a charge or payout with the counter-party IBAN or account number, amount and end-to-end reference. Idempotency keys keep retries safe.
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Validate
Key format and account structure are validated before the message enters the scheme. Bad input never leaves the platform.
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Route
SEPA is attempted first when both parties are reachable on SEPA. Otherwise the request falls back to standard SCT.
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Clear
The message clears through the participating bank in seconds (Instant) or at the next SCT cycle. Reason codes are surfaced verbatim.
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Confirm
The response returns an accepted, pending or rejected status. A signed webhook fires on every state change.
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Reconcile
camt.053 statements land daily; camt.054 debit and credit notifications stream events as they clear against your account.
SEPA vs card rails, at a glance
The two rails coexist. This table is the working comparison finance and product teams use when they decide which rail to route which payment down.
| Dimension | SEPA (SCT / SEPA / BACS Direct Debit) | Card rails |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | EUR and local | Any (multi-currency) |
| Typical fee model | Flat per-transaction | Percentage of ticket |
| Chargebacks | None on SCT/SEPA; BACS Direct Debit refund window applies | Card scheme dispute window |
| Auth model | Bank-side, 3-D Secure on initiation | 3-D Secure 2 via issuer |
| Speed to clear | Seconds (Instant) / next cycle (SCT) | Seconds (auth); days (settle) |
| Identifier | IBAN or account number | PAN + expiry + CVC |
Fee schedules and settlement details on the pricing page.
Features engineered into the SEPA rail
Every capability below ships on the standard integration. Turn features on with a request flag or a dashboard toggle — no enterprise-tier gate on the primitives.
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SEPA Credit Transfer API
Create SCT payments with a POST. Amount, counter-party account, end-to-end reference and metadata on the request.
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SEPA with fallback
Instant attempted first; automatic fallback to standard SCT when the beneficiary bank is not reachable on SEPA.
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BACS mandate lifecycle
Create, sign, store, revoke. Sequence flag (FRST, RCUR, FNAL, OOFF) written to every direct-debit message.
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Key and account validator
Format, country and check-digit validation on capture. Reject bad input at the API edge, not at the bank.
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Signed webhooks
HMAC-signed, replay-protected events for every state change on SCT, SEPA and BACS Direct Debit messages.
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camt.053 and camt.054
Daily statement and debit/credit notification feeds attach to your merchant account for external reconciliation.
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Bulk file support
pain.001 payment initiation and pain.008 direct debit files accepted for finance teams that batch outside the API.
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Idempotent requests
Retry any create request with the same idempotency key — a network blip never becomes a duplicate SEPA payment.
One REST call for a SEPA Credit Transfer
The payment object is the unit of work. Post a SEPA Credit Transfer with the counter-party settlement account, amount and end-to-end reference. Idempotency keeps retries safe. Signed webhooks confirm the accepted, pending or rejected state.
POST /v1/payments
Idempotency-Key: 8f1c-2b3a-9e4d
{
"type": "sepa_credit_transfer",
"instant": true,
"amount": 149000,
"currency": "EUR",
"counterparty": {
"name": "ACME EU LTD",
"iban": "DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00"
},
"end_to_end_id": "INV-2026-08-042",
"remittance": "Invoice INV-2026-08-042"
}
When instant is true the platform attempts SEPA first and falls
back to standard SCT if the beneficiary bank is not reachable on SEPA. Read the
payment object in the API reference.
Where SEPA earns its keep
The default configuration already reflects these four merchant profiles. Turn on the ones you need from the dashboard and tune each scheme's behaviour against your own volumes.
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High-ticket e-commerce pay-in
Order-total transfers over your card ceiling. A bank pull avoids scheme fees, keeps the amount exact and works in every market we settle in.
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Subscription software
Recurring pulls under a stored SEPA mandate. Cheaper per charge than cards for annual plans, with retry logic on soft returns.
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Professional services
Invoiced retainers and staged project billing where the payer prefers bank transfer over card. Instant confirmation on SEPA-reachable banks.
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Merchant payouts
Split funds to suppliers, contractors or your own treasury accounts. SEPA where the beneficiary bank supports it, standard SCT otherwise.
Out of scope for BazPay SEPA: adult, gambling, CBD, nutraceutical, forex, CFD, crypto-exchange, debt-collection and MLM merchants.
Where the instant rails reach
Instant bank payment is a scheme geography, not a single network. Each market runs its own rail under its own central bank, and BazPay speaks all of them through one charge object so you do not integrate a scheme per country.
| Region | Participation |
|---|---|
| Euro area | All twenty euro-area member states clear SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Instant and SEPA Direct Debit as domestic payments. |
| Non-euro EU | Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Czechia, Hungary and Romania run the same SEPA schemes alongside their own domestic currency rails. |
| EEA and beyond | Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein sit inside the EEA; Switzerland, the UK, Monaco, San Marino and Andorra participate as non-EEA SEPA countries. |
| Outside SEPA | Australia, Canada and New Zealand are reached on their own domestic rails — the New Payments Platform and Osko, Interac e-Transfer, and NZ bank transfer — or over SWIFT. |
The authoritative list of participating SEPA institutions is maintained by the Banco Central do Brasil. Confirm reachability for a specific corridor with sales during boarding. For the broader-platform view see Single Euro Payments Area processing, method-level detail on iDEAL payments, the European wallet rails on Faster Payments, cross-border settlement on the NPP payment system, and the acceptance breadth on payment acceptance.
Security and compliance signals
SEPA payments run under the European Payments Council rulebooks, with payer authentication delegated to the payer's own bank. Merchant onboarding follows 5AMLD-aligned record-keeping, and counter-party screening runs against the EU and UK consolidated sanctions lists before a message leaves the platform.
- Authentication
- Strong customer authentication on payment initiation, delegated to the payer's bank
- GDPR
- In-region data residency; DPA on request
- Scheme rulebooks
- SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Instant and SEPA Direct Debit rulebooks published by the European Payments Council; Faster Payments and NPP rulebooks on the non-euro legs
- Sanctions screening
- EU consolidated sanctions list checks on counter-party name and IBAN before the message leaves the platform
- AML
- 5AMLD-aligned merchant onboarding and ongoing monitoring
Questions merchants ask first
What is SEPA, and which schemes does BazPay support?
SEPA is the harmonised set of euro payment schemes coordinated by the European Payments Council. BazPay supports SEPA Credit Transfer for one-off transfers, SEPA Instant for real-time pay-ins, payouts and refunds, and SEPA Direct Debit Core for consented recurring collections — plus the domestic rails in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand behind the same API.
Which markets can I reach on instant bank rails?
The euro area on SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Instant; Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Czechia, Hungary and Romania on the same schemes alongside their domestic rails; the UK on Faster Payments and BACS; Australia on the New Payments Platform and Osko; Canada on Interac e-Transfer; New Zealand on domestic bank transfer. Coverage changes as schemes add participants — sales confirms a specific corridor at boarding.
How fast are SEPA payments?
Under the SEPA rulebook the beneficiary account is credited within ten seconds of the message being accepted, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Participation is mandatory for larger European institutions, so reachability is effectively universal; where a transfer exceeds the SEPA ceiling or a counterparty sits outside the scheme, the platform falls back to SCT.
What is a SEPA mandate, and how does BazPay handle it?
A SEPA Direct Debit mandate is the payer's authorisation, confirmed inside their own banking app, for a named creditor to pull funds on a schedule. BazPay stores the mandate reference, the creditor identifier, the sequence flag (first, recurring, final or one-off) and the authorisation date, and applies them to every collection message. New Zealand merchants get the BACS Direct Debit equivalent on the same object.
Do I need a local bank account to receive settlement?
You need an account in your merchant entity's name in the market you settle in — a European account for EUR, a British IBAN for GBP, and so on. BazPay does not require a specific bank; the merchant chooses. Named settlement currencies for approved corridors are documented on the pricing page.
Are there chargebacks on SEPA Credit Transfer?
SEPA and SCT are push payments and carry no card-style chargeback right — a refund is a new payment in the other direction, which is why the rail is used for higher-ticket orders. SEPA Direct Debit and BACS Direct Debit collections can be contested with the payer's own bank inside the scheme window. BazPay surfaces every refund and reject reason code verbatim via signed webhook.
How do I validate a bank account before I send a SEPA payment?
The API validates key format, account structure and check digits on capture, and resolves an IBAN to the registered holder name before the debit is shown to the payer. Bad input is rejected at the API edge before any message enters the scheme; existence and reachability are confirmed by the receiving institution on submission and reported back in the response and webhook.
Which merchant types can use BazPay for SEPA payments?
Merchants across the EU, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand: e-commerce sellers, subscription software firms, professional-services businesses and digital publishers. BazPay does not board adult, gambling, CBD, nutraceutical, forex, CFD, crypto-exchange, debt-collection or MLM merchants, and does not operate as a marketplace of third-party PSPs.
Add SEPA to your existing integration
Open a sandbox account and post your first SEPA Credit Transfer in the same hour. Prefer a walkthrough of mandate handling, SEPA reachability or camt.053 reconciliation? A payments specialist can map the corridor with you — see also anti-fraud controls and merchant acquiring.