SEPA direct debit requires you to share a mandate with your customers to gain authorization to debit their accounts. You must give each mandate a unique identifier to help customers identify incoming payments.
To cancel a direct debit, customers must reference this mandate ID.
Banks may refer to this mandate using slightly different terms, such as:
- Mandate
- Mandate reference number
- Mandate ID
- Authorisation number
- Authorisation identifier
When generating mandate IDs, they must be less than 35 characters and as simple as possible. The mandate ID tells customers what the payment is for, because it usually contains a membership ID or customer ID. You can use the following characters:
- Letters A to Z (case insensitive)
- Numbers 0 to 9
- Special characters + ? / - : ( ) . , ’
- Spaces
See SEPA Direct Debit to learn how to process SEPA payments with Checkout.com.