Setting up SEPA direct debit

Overview

SEPA direct debit is the most predictable payment method in the subscription business: you collect amounts when they fall due instead of waiting for bank transfers. Kyvento knows two routes for this, and they differ fundamentally — choose one deliberately first.

• Collection via your payment provider — Stripe or Unzer handle the mandate and the collection. The standard route, and the only one offered in the checkout and the customer portal.
• Your own SEPA collection — you create the direct debit file yourself and submit it to your bank. This requires your own creditor identifier.

Route 1: collection via the payment provider

Requirements

• A connected payment provider — SEPA technically runs via Stripe or Unzer (see Accepting credit card payments). Whether SEPA can be selected depends solely on the status of that connection.
• No creditor identifier of your own. On this route you do not need to apply for one: the collection runs under your payment provider's creditor identifier, while you remain named as the payee on the mandate.

Under "Settings" → "Payments" → "General" tab you enable the "SEPA Direct Debit" payment method — it is then offered in the hosted checkout and the customer portal.

How the mandate comes about

The customer grants the SEPA mandate themselves at checkout: they enter their IBAN and confirm the mandate text; Kyvento documents the consent server-side with timestamp, IP address and browser. A mandate PDF is then created automatically, showing the mandate reference, the last digits of the IBAN and the creditor identifier of the collecting provider — traceable on the customer at any time.

Route 2: your own SEPA collection

If you would rather collect through your own bank, the route leads via the "SEPA collection" navigation entry under "Finances". Here the opposite of route 1 applies: you are the creditor. Without your own creditor identifier — applied for at the central bank — and a stored collection account, nothing can be created; you enter both in the payment settings.

The process is deliberately manual:

1. You choose a collection date. It has to be a banking day and lie at least two banking days in the future — the file still needs to reach your bank and be accepted there.
2. The preview shows which claims are included and which are not, each with a reason — for instance because the amount differs from the announced one or the invoice is no longer open.
3. You create the direct debit file and submit it to your bank.

Two points matter because they concern money:

• Kyvento learns nothing from your bank. For credits and returns to be posted, upload your bank statement (camt.053) or a table file under "Feedback from your bank". Matching happens via the reference from the direct debit file; uploading the same file twice changes nothing. The file itself is not retained — a bank statement contains your customers' complete bank details.
• Kyvento cannot recall a direct debit once it has been submitted to your bank. For that, contact your bank.

Created files are deleted after seven days; they can be recreated from the batch afterwards.

The complete process — creditor identifier, recording mandates, creating the file, uploading the feedback — is described in Collecting SEPA direct debits through your own bank.

Collection in day-to-day subscription life

• Kyvento announces every subscription renewal to the customer seven days in advance, plus the SEPA pre-notification before the collection. That way no debit comes as a surprise — and returns become rarer.
• If a collection is declined, Kyvento does not retry it on its own. The invoice stays open and dunning takes over — see Failed payments: smart retry.
• If a direct debit comes back, you may have to record it — see Recording a chargeback manually.

Next steps

• Connect a provider — see Accepting credit card payments
• Dealing with returned direct debits — see Recording a chargeback manually