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Let your customers based in the UK easily pay by authorizing you to debit their bank account via Upflow portals. Available for:
Customer (payer) countryPresentment currencyMerchants (payee) country
UKGBPUK
Eligibility requirement: BACS Direct Debit requires a UK legal entity tied to your Stripe account. This is a Stripe platform constraint for BACS DD eligibility — merchants without a UK legal entity cannot enable BACS DD, even if their customers are based in the UK.

What is BACS direct debit?

BACS (“Bankers Automated Clearing System”) is a UK payment network that enables bank-to-bank payments. It features two main modes for transferring the funds:
  • BACS Credit: your customer instructs their bank to send the money to yours. This is functionally similar to a wire transfer; customers “push” money to you.
  • BACS Debit: you instruct your bank to debit the customer’s account after obtaining authorization. You “pull” the funds into your bank account.
👉 BACS Direct Debit lets you collect payments by directly instructing your customer’s bank to transfer the funds to yours. The network supports both one-off and recurring debits.

Collecting payments via BACS direct debit

First, follow this short guide to make BACS Direct Debit available as a payment method for your customers in a few clicks. Triggering a direct debit over the BACS network involves 2 main steps:
  1. your customer authorizes the debit by agreeing to a one-off or recurring mandate.
  2. the debit order is issued over the BACS network.

Step 1 - Debit mandate

Customer fill in bank detailsCustomer confirm bank details

Step 2 - triggering BACS debit

After your customer has confirmed the mandate, the BACS Debit is automatically triggered:
  • immediately when payment is confirmed in step 2 above.
  • or according to the autopay schedule if no invoice is currently overdue.
Upflow confirm successful paymentSaved BACS debit bank details

Note: It is not yet possible to save a BACS payment method without paying for an invoice at the same time.