Direct Debit

Overview

Citi’s real-time Direct Debit and eMandate scheme can support clients’ customer collections of recurring payments.

A Direct Debit (also known as Debit Order) allows a corporate beneficiary to pull a payment directly from the payer’s account, normally subject to a one-time authorization from the payer. Authorization requirements vary by country.

The authorization is often in the form of a Mandate, which provides authorization up front for one or multiple transactions and is legally binding. Citi offers Electronic Mandates (eMandates), which are paperless Mandates via online or telephone authorization. In markets where eMandates are supported, there are different forms the solution takes. In some countries, banks are involved in debtor authorizations. In others, Clearinghouses may maintain a mandate database and undertake payment validations.

Citi APIs offer Direct Debit and eMandate initiation and notifications to support country-specific mandate exchange and management flows.

Citi also offers PayTo APIs as a new, real-time alternative to traditional direct debits in Australia, developed by Australia Payments Plus in collaboration with the industry. PayTo is a digital mandate management API that allows businesses to fund accounts, make one-off payments, and more. PayTo is available 24x7x365* and offers real-time fund availability.

*subject to downtimes; clients will be notified

What will this help me with?

Operating Efficiency — Automated reconciliation as funds are pulled directly from your customers’ accounts to cover invoices, with automatic storage and easy retrieval of mandate data.

Accelerated Onboarding — Direct Debit can be set up for your customers faster and with ease, with no need for the typical printing, signing, and returning effort by customers. It can also help with easy authorization and real-time account validation.

Lower Costs — Direct Debit is a lower cost collection method compared to card collections, also avoiding the churn due to card expiry for higher customer retention.

How it works

Direct Debit/eMandate

Once a bilateral agreement is in place between the creditor and debtor, the eMandate registration request is sent by the initiating party (Creditor) to the receiving party (Debtor) in the collection chain to accept instructions from the creditor to debit funds from the debtor’s account.

The eMandate Initiation API endpoint accepts the mandate registration request. Once a registration request has been sent and acknowledged, you can pull on the status of the eMandate registration using the eMandate Status Inquiry API.

You can invoke the eMandate notification API endpoint to learn more about the eMandate status.

Once the eMandate is in place, send the request for Direct Debit on a recurring basis and Citi will debit from your customers’ accounts.

PayTo

Clients using PayTo APIs in Australia can create, modify, and recall Mandates.

• Create Mandate — Create a mandate
• Modify Mandate — Amend, cancel, suspend an existing Mandate, or release a suspended Mandate
• Recall Mandate — Recall a creation or an amendment of a Mandate

Availability

Formats

eMandate API Endpoints

eMandate requests and responses

Direct Debit requests and responses

PayTo APIs are available in JSON format only.

Countries and cutoff times

PayTo APIs are available in Australia only. The tables below indicate Direct Debit and Citi-Enabled eMandate availability by region (✓ = Available).

Security requirements

Citi uses access tokens to authenticate and authorize API requests from your application. To receive an access token from Citi you will first send an API request to our OAuth endpoint using your API credentials: client ID and secret key. Please visit the Authentication guide for more details.