Import PADs/ACSS Data

Mandate requirements

Payments Canada Rules for pre-authorized debits (PADs) require businesses to present a mandate agreement with clear and specific terms for one-time or recurring debits prior to debiting a customer’s bank account. After you collect customer agreement, this mandate gives your business authorization to debit the customer’s bank account on a specified schedule. The mandate includes the customer’s institution number, transit number, account number, name and email.

Stripe can only import the PADs that you confirm you hold the mandates for. After determining mandate status for all, some, or none of the bank accounts, inform us so we can instruct you which steps to take next.

Debiting PADs/ACSS

In our intake form, choose how you’ll debit the PADs:

• Only for automatic use with invoices, subscriptions, or recurring payment schedules.
• Only for on-demand customer-initiated payments.

  Note

  You can’t debit these PADs for automatic use with invoices, subscriptions, or recurring payment schedules.

• For both on-demand customer-initiated payments and automatic use with invoices, subscriptions, or recurring payment schedules.

PADs/ACSS file guidance

• A processor can provide a number of different fields.
• We advise your processor to provide a full export of all customer and payment method data to Stripe.
• Stripe can filter out any unnecessary fields from the previous processor’s data as needed.
• Stripe can merge multiple received files if either the old customer ID or the old source ID is present in both files.
• Stripe can only import PADs that are pre-authorized because verification is a requirement of ACSS scheme rules.

File formatting requirements

Export data files must meet the following data standards for us to proceed with an import:

• The file must be in CSV format.
• The file must be UTF-8 encoded.
• Delimit rows by a single newline character \n (not \r\n).
• Delimit columns by ,
• You must wrap all fields containing commas in double quotes ". We recommend wrapping all fields in double quotes.
• Leave empty fields entirely empty (no character in between delimiters). You must not denote a missing field with NULL, N/A, or any other value.
• Escape any double quotes that are part of the content with another double quote per the CSV RFC. For example: "``William ""``Bard of Avon``"" Shakespeare``"
• Fields can’t contain newline characters (\r or \n) within a field. Example of what to avoid: 101 1st Ave\nApt 1
• All rows must have the same number of columns.
• Columns support any order.
• You must encrypt sensitive data files with our PGP key before submitting through SFTP.

PADs/ACSS data fields