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Display of the SEPA Direct Debit Form

In Short

Section titled “In Short”

The SEPA direct debit form is offered only to customers whose billing country is inside the SEPA zone. Where the form is missing, the cause is almost always the customer’s Country field: left empty, or set to a country outside the zone.

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”

A SEPA direct debit runs on the SEPA scheme, which covers a fixed list of countries — see the list of member states. A debit cannot be presented to a bank outside that list, so the form that collects an IBAN is not offered where it could not work.

The country that decides it is the one on the customer’s billing address. It is read on the hosted pages, the only place a payment form is displayed. A country outside the zone, or left empty, rules out SEPA direct debit: the customer is offered only the other payment methods enabled on their segment, and none when SEPA direct debit is the only one.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

Check the customer’s billing country

Section titled “Check the customer’s billing country”
  1. Open Subscribers and select the customer.
  2. Open Actions → Edit.
  3. Read the Country field of the billing address.
  4. Correct it if it does not match the customer’s actual billing country, then Save.
  5. Reopen the payment method registration link — the hosted page offers the SEPA form once the country is inside the zone.

Specific Cases

Section titled “Specific Cases”
  • A customer outside the zone holding an account inside it. The form follows the billing country, not the bank. A customer billed at an address outside the SEPA zone is not offered the form even when the account to be debited is held in a SEPA country. Collecting from that customer is done with an offline payment method — bank transfer, for instance — rather than by direct debit.
  • The form cannot be found in the back office. It is not there: no payment form is displayed on the merchant side, so an IBAN is never entered on the customer’s behalf. A SEPA mandate is always registered by the customer on a hosted page, reached through the link generated from Actions → Edit.
  • The country is inside the SEPA zone but the form still does not appear. One other cause is worth checking: no payment gateway is enabled for SEPA direct debit on the customer’s segment, in which case the form is offered to no customer of that segment, whatever their country.

See Also

Section titled “See Also”