Migrate discontinued Spanish virtual accounts

Learn how to remove Spanish (ES) virtual accounts from your SEPA Bank Transfers integrations.

Stripe no longer supports Spanish virtual accounts (VBANs) due to the upcoming regulatory changes in Spain. These regulations don’t apply to the VBANs for other supported countries such as Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

This means:

Stripe won’t assign new Spanish VBANs to customers.
Customers with existing Spanish VBANs can no longer send money to them.

If you use Bank Transfers with Spanish VBANs, you must migrate your affected customers to alternative VBANs based on your integration type. There are no additional Stripe fees for replacement VBANs, whether created manually by you or automatically by Stripe.

Update the country parameter for payments and billing

You need to replace the ES parameter value in the PaymentIntents, Invoicing and Subscriptions APIs with any of BE, DE, FR, IE, NL.

Update the value of the payment_method_options[customer_balance][bank_transfer][eu_bank_transfer][country] parameter

Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents \
    -u sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
    -d amount=2000 \
    -d currency=eur \
    -d customer={{CUSTOMER_ID}}
 \
    -d "payment_method_types[]=customer_balance \
    -d "payment_method_data[type]=customer_balance \
    -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][funding_type]"=bank_transfer \
    -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][bank_transfer][type]"=eu_bank_transfer \
    -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][bank_transfer][eu_bank_transfer][country]"=ES
    -d "payment_method_options[customer_balance][bank_transfer][eu_bank_transfer][country]"=IE # or BE, DE, FR, NL

Update the country parameter in Funding Instructions

Replace the ES parameter value in Funding Instructions API calls with any of BE, DE, FR, IE, NL.

Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers/{{CUSTOMER_ID}}
/funding_instructions \
    -u sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
    -d currency=eur \
    -d funding_type=bank_transfer \
    -d "bank_transfer[type]"=eu_bank_transfer \
    -d "bank_transfer[eu_bank_transfer][country]"=ES
    -d "bank_transfer[eu_bank_transfer][country]"=IE # or BE, DE, FR, NL

You can also create new VBANs in the Dashboard, but you must migrate each customer individually. In the Dashboard, click Customers, and select a customer to open the applicable Customer details page. In Payment methods, click the plus () icon, and select Add a bank transfer account.

Dynamic payment methods

As a dynamic payment methods user, you currently don’t specify a VBAN country in your integrations. Instead, Stripe automatically selects one based on predefined rules. New ES VBANs will no longer be automatically created. Your existing customers with ES VBANs will get new ones from the other supported countries.

Notify your customers

Notify your customers with Spanish VBANs of this change. This will help to avoid delays caused by funds sent to the deactivated Spanish VBANs in the future.