Overview

This extension utilises the workflow of SEPA Direct Debit payments to keep track of payment contracts with external payment service providers and therefore extends the CiviSEPA extension.

In short, the SEPA Direct Debit process works like the following:

1. Debtor issues a mandate to the creditor, stating the amount, date and frequency of installments the creditor is allowed to collect
2. Creditor instructs their bank to collect the mandated amount from the debtor's bank account
3. Debtor's bank transfers the amount from the debtor's bank account to the creditor's bank.
4. Creditor's bank transfers the amount to the creditor's bank account

This process is similar to how payment service providers (PSP) process their payments. Instead of a mandate, PSP associate payment tokens to debtors, which can be used by the creditor to collect recurring payments without the debtor being present or entering their data for each single payment, or having to maintain all the different payment methods offered by the PSP. With this token, creditors may then issue payment requests to the PSP, who, in turn, process the payment with the payment method and debtor information associated with the payment contract.

This extension extends CiviSEPA with a general framework for individual PSP implementations to plug in. Each implementation provides:

• A transaction group file format
• A runner implementation to send transactions to the PSP