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Documentation Index

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Let your customers based in Europe easily pay by authorizing you to debit their bank account via Upflow portals. Available for:
Customer (payer) countryPresentment currencyMerchants (payee) country
EU* & UKEUREU*, UK, US, CA, AU
* includes other SEPA countries: Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Vatican City.

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What is SEPA direct debit?

SEPA (“Single Euro Payments Area”) is a European payment network overseen by the European Payments Council (EPC) that enables euro-denominated bank-to-bank payments across 36 countries. It features two main modes for transferring funds:
  • SEPA Credit Transfer: your customer instructs their bank to send the money to yours. This is functionally similar to a wire transfer; customers “push” money to you.
  • SEPA Direct Debit: you instruct your bank to debit the customer’s account after obtaining authorization. You “pull” the funds into your bank account.
👉 SEPA 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.

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Collecting payments via SEPA direct debit

First, follow this short guide to make SEPA Direct Debit available as a payment method for your customers in a few clicks. Triggering a direct debit over the SEPA network involves 2 main steps:
  1. your customer provides their IBAN and authorizes the debit by agreeing to a mandate.
  2. the debit order is issued over the SEPA network.

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Step 1 - Mandate

From their payment portal, your customer selects SEPA Debit as their payment method and fills in their:
  • IBAN — their International Bank Account Number
  • Full name — the account holder’s name
  • Country or region and billing address
SEPA Debit form filled with IBAN, full name, country and address fields At the bottom of the form, your customer reads and implicitly agrees to the SEPA mandate by confirming payment. This mandate authorizes you and Stripe (Upflow’s payment infrastructure partner) to send instructions to your customer’s bank to debit their account. Your customer is also notified at least 2 days before each future debit.
Note: SEPA Direct Debit has a default transaction limit of €10,000 per payment. If a customer selects invoices totaling more than this amount, they will be prompted to reduce their selection or use another payment method. You can request an increase through Stripe support.
SEPA transaction limit notice when total exceeds €10,000

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Step 2 - triggering SEPA debit

Once your customer has confirmed the mandate, the SEPA Debit is automatically triggered:
  • immediately when payment is confirmed in step 1 above.
  • or according to the autopay schedule if no invoice is currently overdue.
Your customer will see a confirmation screen once the debit has been successfully initiated: SEPA payment success screen showing 'Thank you for your payment' with total amount and payment details SEPA Debits generally take up to 3–5 business days to be confirmed (or fail).
Note on recurring debits: if your customer opted into autopay when saving their payment method, future invoices will be debited automatically using the same IBAN — no further action required from your customer.

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Customer recall rights

Under SEPA regulations, your customers have the right to request a refund (recall) of an authorized debit directly from their bank — no action is required on your end to enable this. They have 8 weeks from the debit date to do so. For what happens in Upflow when a recall or a late payment failure occurs, see Disputes & chargebacks and Failed payments.