SEPA Credit Transfer payments with SourcesDeprecated

Use Sources to accept SEPA payments sent directly from your customers.

Warning

We deprecated the Sources API and plan to remove support for local payment methods. If you currently integrate with SEPA Credit Transfer payments using the Sources API, you must migrate to the Payment Methods API.

For information about integrating SEPA Credit Transfer payments with the current APIs, see Migrating from Sources-based Credit transfers.

Stripe users in Europe can receive SEPA Credit Transfers directly from customers using Sources—a single integration path for creating payments using any supported method.

During the payment process, a Source object is created and your customer is provided with an IBAN. Your customer uses this IBAN to make a transfer from their bank account using the SEPA system. After the transfer is received, your integration uses the source to make a charge request and complete the payment.

SEPA Credit Transfers is a push-based and reusable method of payment. This means your customer must take action to send funds to you, which can take a few days to arrive. Once the funds have arrived, there is synchronous confirmation of any charge request made.

Create a Source object

A Source object is created server-side using the Source creation endpoint with the following parameters:

Parameter	Value
`type`	sepa_credit_transfer
`currency`	eur (SEPA Credit Transfer payments must be in EUR)
`owner[email]`	the full email address of the customer

Stripe returns a Source object containing the relevant details for the method of payment used. Information specific to SEPA is provided within the sepa_credit_transfer subhash.

{
  "id": "src_18cPLvAHEMiOZZp1YBngt7Yv",
  "object": "source",
  "currency": "eur",
  "flow": "receiver",
  "livemode": false,
  "receiver": {
    "address": "DE89370400440532013000",
    "amount_received": 0,
    "amount_charged": 0,

Error codes

Source creation for SEPA Credit Transfer payments may return any of the following errors:

Error	Description
`payment_method_not_available`	The payment method is currently not available. You should invite your customer to fallback to another payment method to proceed.
`processing_error`	An unexpected error occurred preventing us from creating the source. The source creation should be retried.

Have the customer push funds

When creating a source, its status is initially set to pending and can’t yet be used to make a charge request. In addition, receiver[amount_received] is set to zero since no funds have yet been transferred. Your customer must transfer the amount you request so that the necessary funds are available.

After creating a source, you should provide your customer the sepa_credit_transfer[iban], the sepa_credit_transfer[bic], and the amount you need the customer to send. Customers create a transfer with their bank, using the information you provide. Bank transfers can take up to 2 days to complete, but typically complete within 1 day from when the customer sends the funds.

SEPA Credit Transfer sources are reusable and can be used for recurring payments. The information provided to the customer can be reused whenever they need to send additional funds.

Charge the Source

Once the customer makes a transfer, receiver[amount_received] is updated to reflect the total amount of all received transfers, and the status of the source transitions to chargeable (if it was already chargeable it will not change). Your customer can transfer any amount across multiple transfers. Each transfer they make is represented by a source transaction.

Since these transfers happen asynchronously (and can take days), it is essential that your integration rely on webhooks to determine when the source becomes chargeable to create a charge. Please refer to our best practices for more details on how to best integrate payment methods using webhooks.

The following webhook events are sent to notify you about changes to the status of a SEPA Credit Transfer source:

Event	Description
`source.chargeable`	A `Source` object becomes `chargeable` once it has received funds.
`source.transaction.created`	Your customer has sent a transfer and a new source transaction has been created.

After the Source becomes chargeable, and before creating a charge request to complete the payment, attach it to a Customer for later reuse.

Attaching the Source to a Customer

Attaching the Source to a Customer is required for you to reuse it for future payments. Please refer to our Sources & Customers guide for more details on how to attach Sources to new or existing Customers and how the two objects interact together. The following snippet attaches the Source to a new Customer:

Making a charge request to finalize the payment

Once attached, you can use the Source object’s ID along with the Customer object’s ID to perform a charge request and finalize the payment.

When a charge request is made, the source’s receiver[amount_charged] is updated with the amount that has been used. The receiver[amount_received] does not change. The available amount left to charge is the difference between these two values.

For instance, if the value for receiver[amount_received] is initially 2500 (€25) and two charges of 1100 (€11) and 900 (€9) are created at separate times, the value for receiver[amount_charged] is 2000 (€20). The remaining amount available for charges is 500 (€5).

Once all the funds have been used, the two amounts are the same. When this occurs, the status of the source transitions back to pending. Should the customer make any additional transfers, the source again transitions to chargeable.

Confirm that the charge has succeeded

Since the customer has already pushed the funds at the time the Source becomes chargeable, unless there is an unexpected error, the Charge will immediately succeed.

You will also receive the following webhook event as the charge is created:

Event	Description
`charge.succeeded`	The charge succeeded and the payment is complete.

We recommend that you rely on the charge.succeeded webhook event to notify your customer that the payment process has been completed and their order is confirmed. Please refer to our best practices for more details on how to best integrate payment methods using webhooks.

Refunds

SEPA Credit Transfer payments can be refunded either through the Dashboard or API.

To complete a refund, your customer must provide account information where funds should be returned to. There are two ways to collect this information. By default, Stripe automatically contacts the customer at the email address provided during source creation in the owner[email] field. When a refund is created, the customer is requested to fill in this information through email, after which the refund is processed automatically.

Alternatively, you can obtain the customer’s account information during payment, eliminating the need for Stripe to email your customers. To do this, set the receiver[refund_attributes_method] to manual during source creation. Listen for the source.transaction.created webhook event whenever a payment is made to obtain the customer’s IBAN and account holder name, as values provided under sepa_credit_transfer[sender_iban] and sepa_credit_transfer[sender_name], respectively.

After you obtain the source, update it to provide the refund information using the IBAN and account holder name, along with any additional refund parameters you want to provide.

Parameter	Value
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_iban]`	The IBAN of the customer’s account
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_name]`	The account holder’s name
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_line1]`	The account holder’s address
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_line2]`
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_city]`
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_state]`
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_postal_code]`
`sepa_credit_transfer[refund_account_holder_address_country]`

Caution

Refund attributes can only be added to a source once. Any future refunds associated with this source will only be sent to the refund account information provided first.

If you set the refund_attributes_method on a source to manual but did not provide any refund account information, you will receive a source.refund_attributes_required event when you attempt to create a refund. You will need to provide refund details through the API prior to a refund being issued.

A refund’s initial status is pending. If the refund fails, you receive the refund.failed event, and the status of the refund transitions to failed. This means that we couldn’t process the refund, and you must return the funds to your customer outside of Stripe. This is rare, but might happen if the refunded account is frozen. Completed refunds have a succeeded status.

Disputed payments

Unlike traditional SEPA debit transactions, SEPA Credit Transfer payments can’t be reversed. A customer may request for their funds back, at which point Stripe reviews each request and can take action if it is deemed necessary.

Testing SEPA Credit Transfer payments

When creating a Source object using your test API keys, a transaction is automatically created on the source. A source.chargeable and a source.transaction.created webhook event are sent immediately.

The amount included in the test transaction defaults to €10.00. You can customize this amount by providing an email address of amount_[custom_amount]@example.com as the value for owner[email]. For instance, to create a test transaction of the amount €42.42, use amount_4242@example.com.

By default, there will be no reference on the SourceTransaction. You can specify a reference much like an amount, by providing an email address of reference_[custom_reference]@example.com as the value for the owner[email].

If you would like to customize both the amount and reference, you would provide an email address of amount_[custom_amount]-reference_[custom_reference]@example.com. For instance, to create a test transaction of the amount €25.00 with a reference of TESTORDER, use amount_2500-reference_TESTORDER@example.com.

You can also test multiple pushes to a given source by updating the owner[email] property using the API in a similar way.

This example creates a testmode SourceTransaction for the specified source, with the amount property set to 4242.

Source transactions

Unlike other push-based payment methods, a SEPA Credit Transfer source has no required amount that your customer must send. You can instruct your customer to send any amount, and it can be made up of multiple transfers. Your customers can also send additional amounts when necessary (for example, recurring payments). As such, sources can have multiple associated transactions. After receiving a transfer from the customer of any amount, the source becomes chargeable and is ready to use.

For instance, if you request your customer to send 100 EUR, they can send the full amount in a single transfer or multiple transfers of smaller amounts (for example, four transfers of 25 EUR). In the case of recurring payments, your customer could create a recurring transfer with their bank for a specified amount, ensuring that the source always has the correct amount of funds for you to create the necessary charge requests. If the recurring amount varies, your customer can send the correct amount whenever necessary.

When a transfer has been received, the source’s receiver[amount_received] value represents the total that has been received. receiver[amount_received] - receiver[amount_charged] gives the amount available for creating a charge with. Further transfers result in additional transactions being created, and the amount is added to the available value for receiver[amount_received].

For the purposes of a refund, the receiver[refund_attributes_status] attribute is set to available once there are available funds and the customer has provided the necessary account information.

...
"receiver": {
  "address": "DE89370400440532013000",
  "amount_received": 1000,
  "amount_charged": 0,
  "amount_returned": 0,
  "refund_attributes_status": "available",
  "refund_attributes_method": "auto"
},
...

Retrieving transaction history

You can retrieve a list of all transactions associated with a specific source using the following API request:

Each transaction is listed with the amount that the customer transferred, along with additional information about the transfer.

{
  "object": "list",
  "url": "/v1/sources/src_1ElMI7Ld2eMUwVekm20Hfg6V/source_transactions",
  "has_more": false,
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "srctxn_ldfj129843jhs09u09",
      "object": "source_transaction",
      "amount": 1000,
      "created": 1472746608,
      "currency": "eur",
      "type": "sepa_credit_transfer",
      "sepa_credit_transfer": {
        "sender_name": "Jenny Rosen",
        "sender_iban": "DE89370400440532013000",
        "reference": "Order 12345",
      },
    }
  ],
}