Funding your EU merchant account

We have prepared some tips 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 and SEPA Instant.

There are a number of factors that might determine the method you utilise, including settlement time, transfer limits and fees. You can find more details on each method here.

2. Choose a frequency

The frequency at which 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 you will need to be mindful of bank cut-off times and weekends/public holidays to ensure you have sufficient funds in place.
If you choose to top up larger amounts on longer periodic frequency you may decide to utilise SEPA Instant for short term one-off payments up to €100k (the default limit) where speed is required.
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 TrueLayer Console, you can set up rules to sweep excess funds back to your corporate account once they exceed an upper threshold.
If you are making regular deposits of the same value, consider setting up a regular standing order to your Truelayer merchant account if available with your bank.

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 a daily or weekly transfer approach. If you miss the cut-off time, it could add an additional business day to process the payment.

It's very important to 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 inbound payments to your merchant account is 15:45 CET.

We recommend 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 order for these payments

4. Check merchant account considerations

For your merchant account with TrueLayer, the cut-off time to process inbound SEPA Credit payments is 15.45 CET. Any payments received from your sending bank after this will be processed the next business day.

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 the initiating and receiving banks. You need to plan ahead to ensure you have sufficient funds available to cover any bank holiday periods. You should also check with your bank if there are any additional public holidays they don’t process payments on.

5. How can I send a funding payment to the 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.

6. Useful 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 threshold.

Learn more about low balance notifications.