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I'm working on a project where we collect payments from users using credit/debit/PayPal payments.

The service is taking payments from users on behalf of a 3rd party organisation. Once we take the payment, minus fees, we want to transfer the amount to the organisations bank account.

For now, what we can do is pay the organisation using Online Banking BACS bank transfer.

But I would like to know if there is a way to do this automatically using an API.

If we need to somehow register the 3rd parties bank account details before making transfers, this is fine. We just want to automate the whole process, since at the moment the transfer is a manual step.

Are there any gateways or APIs I can use for this? In the UK?

Joe Doyle
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Mooktakim Ahmed
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    I would like to know what options are available before i talk to our bank – Mooktakim Ahmed Mar 16 '10 at 17:10
  • Did you ever get an answer to this? I'm in Canada and would like a similar service. I'm using one gateway, but there are a lot of technical challenges. I would like alternatives. – John Apr 08 '10 at 16:41
  • Ahmed, did you find a solution and if so how happy are you with this after a few months? – Gavin Oct 14 '10 at 10:40
  • Have not found a solution yet. We are doing this manually using online banking for the moment. Since there isn't an established solution to this, we've decided to stick with online banking. Bigger fish to fry and stuff :) – Mooktakim Ahmed Oct 14 '10 at 14:08
  • Bump! Did you find a solution? – Gavin Jun 30 '11 at 20:22
  • Maybe this can help some Java developers: https://tools20022.com The Java API documentation is here: https://tools20022.com/apidocs/index.html – gouessej Apr 14 '19 at 12:14

2 Answers2

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As this is still un-answered I'll throw my hat into the ring.

For the benefit of non-UK users, the UK has a central clearing system called Bacs, which is run by the major banks in the country. However, companies can also makes submissions directly to that clearing system, by using Bacs Software.

There are a number of companies that sell on-premise and online services/APIs that allow you to send money directly via Bacs (and collect Direct Debits).

DISCLAIMER: I currently work for a software company (Bottomline Technologies) which sells a Bacs API - I won't mention the product name and to see alternative companies you can simply Google for 'bacs software api'

Hope this helps

isNaN1247
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    I'm not exactly sure about the rules of StackOverFlow. But I don't mind hearing about services people provide that answer the original question. The services your company provides is exactly what i was looking for. Thanks for the answer. – Mooktakim Ahmed Jun 21 '11 at 10:47
  • Very helpful, thanks. [Here](http://www.bacs.co.uk/Bacs/Businesses/Resources/Pages/ApprovedSoftware.aspx) is the list of BACS approved software. – Timmmm Dec 07 '12 at 18:44
  • @Timmmm Your link is broken, it's here now: https://www.bacs.co.uk/Services/Bacsapprovedservices/Pages/ApprovedSoftware.aspx – gouessej Apr 14 '19 at 12:09
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You are going in the wrong direction. You should talk to payment processors (which may or may not include your bank) about the business considerations, which probably are more important than the technological considerations. Generally you can expect something somewhat reasonable that you will (after fiddling with it enough) be able to convince to work. It doesn't matter whether this involves some sort of api library, soap calls, or other communication method.

If you honestly consider having the technological considerations more important than the business considerations, then just go with Paypal and don't write your own shopping cart stuff at all. This is easier to use and will do more of the heavy lifting for you, but which will also probably charge you more.

Once you create a real shopping cart and start handling payments yourself (i.e. taking in CC information and sending it to a payment processor), you start getting into a mess of legal and technical concerns involving PCI compliance and the like, which will apply regardless of your choice of payment processor*.

*This is US-specific, but I bet the UK has something similar.

Brian
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  • Taking people from customers is not a problem here. We actually use PayPal and a payment gateway. But what we want to do is transfer that money to a specific bank account. – Mooktakim Ahmed Mar 18 '10 at 10:11