Fund your EU merchant account

Below is a guide to help you to plan and implement your EU merchant account funding strategy.

1. Choose your payment method

Euro transfers revolve around SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area. Within SEPA, there are two schemes which banks and payment providers can use to make euro transfers between accounts:

SEPA Credit
SEPA Instant

Factors that might determine the method you use include settlement time, transfer limits and fees. Find more details on each method here.

2. Choose a frequency

The frequency you choose to top up your merchant account will largely depend on your own business operations and preferences. You should consider the following:

If you choose to top up on a daily basis via SEPA Credit, be mindful of bank cut-off times and weekends/public holidays to ensure you have sufficient funds to cover those payments.
If you choose to top up larger amounts at a lower frequency, you may want to use SEPA Instant for short-term one-off payments up to €100k (the default limit). These payments will settle faster than ones made through SEPA Credit.
Where practical, having a buffer in your merchant account balance reduces the risk of low balance scenarios. This is especially important during periods like Christmas and Easter where there are multiple bank holidays.
In the merchant account dashboard in Console, you can set up rules to sweep excess funds back to your business account once they exceed an upper threshold.

If you are making regular deposits of the same value, and if your bank offers this option, consider setting up a regular standing order to your TrueLayer merchant account.

3. Check your bank processes and cut-off times

Before you implement your account funding process, check the cut-off times your bank has for outbound SEPA Credit transactions. This is especially important if you are implementing daily or weekly transfers. If you miss the cut-off time, it could take an additional business day to process the payment.

We recommend that you confirm the points below with your bank:

Cut-off times
Bank-specific transaction limits
Transaction fees
Support for SEPA Instant cross-border payments
Local bank holidays where SEPA Credit payments will not be processed
Ability to set up standing orders for these payments

Cut-off times

Submit SEPA Credit transactions to your bank before 13:45 CET to mitigate the risk of processing delays from either your sending bank or beneficiary bank.

The cut-off time for payments into your merchant account is 15:45 CET. Any payments received from the remitter bank after this will be processed the next business day.

Bank-specific transaction limits

For a full view of all the banks that we support along with their transaction limits, see the providers page in Console.

Bank holidays

SEPA Credit payments are not processed on the following Europe-wide bank holidays:

New Year (January 1)
Good Friday (moving holiday, two days before Easter Sunday)
Easter Monday (moving holiday, one day after Easter Sunday)
Spring Festival (May 1)
First Day of Christmas (December 25)
Second Day of Christmas (December 26)

This applies to both remitter and beneficiary banks. Plan ahead to ensure you have sufficient funds available to cover any bank holiday periods.

Your bank may have additional public holidays they don’t process payments on — we recommend checking this with them.

4. How can I top up my merchant account?

When sending a payment from your bank, please use the bank details found within the Details tab of the merchant account dashboard in Console.

After the transfer has been made, you can confirm it has been processed by checking the balance in the merchant account dashboard. This balance is updated as soon as the funds are processed by the recipient bank.

Learn more about merchant account details in Console.

5. Tools to manage your funding process

To avoid an unexpected low balance in your merchant account, you can set a threshold that enables us to trigger webhook notifications when the balance reaches the following points:

1.5x above the threshold
At the threshold
When you recover your balance and it becomes 2x the threshold

Learn more about low balance notifications.