Merchant accounts

Merchant accounts are real bank accounts managed for you by TrueLayer, which include features to help you manage transactions and simplify payouts. You must have a merchant account to make payouts or refunds. Each merchant account has its own account number, sort code and IBAN. A merchant account also has a unique merchant_account_id

To make payouts from a merchant account, your merchant account must contain enough money to make the payment. Users can make payments to your merchant account, but you can also top it up yourself.

By default, you have one GBP and one EUR merchant account in sandbox. You can only accept payments in and make payouts from a GBP account in GBP, and from an EUR account in EUR. To enable merchant accounts in production, contact us.

Manage your merchant account

• Get info about your merchant account
• See a record of your merchant account transactions and payment sources
• Create a payment into a merchant account
• Merchant account webhooks

Merchant account benefits

Different currencies

TrueLayer supports transactions in GBP and EUR. EUR payments often require more steps in the end user flow during payment authorisation than GBP payments do. You can set up different user flows for different merchant accounts. This means that you can use the hosted payment page or embedded payment page for EUR payments, and a direct API integration for GBP payments.

Note that you can only have one merchant account per currency for each client_id.

Simple, flexible pay-ins

Use your merchant_account_id to direct payments to your merchant account. This reduces the chance of errors and streamlines the pay-in flow.

Payouts

Each payment to a merchant account generates a payment_source_id, which identifies the account that a payment came from. Use this ID to make a payout to an account that previously made a payment to your merchant account with no need for authorisation. This is known as a closed-loop payout.

You can make payouts to an account that has not previously paid into your merchant account. These are known as open-loop payouts

Refunds

Similarly to a closed-loop payout, a refund is a payment made back to a user without the need for user authorisation. Refunds are based on a previous payment id. This means that there's no need to provide payment or user details. Additionally, you can make a refund over multiple payments, but they cannot exceed the initial payment value.

Automatic sweeping

One way to top up your merchant account is by setting up regular sweeping from your corporate bank account. You can do this right in Console, if you have a business account allowlisted. Select the times that you would like transfers to occur and the amount to transfer each time, and the money moves automatically.

Low balance notifications

When you set up your merchant account, you can specify a balance that you don't want your merchant account to go below. When this threshold is set, you receive webhooks to notify you when your account balance approaches and drops below that threshold. You also receive webhooks when you top up your account.

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See your merchant account info in Console

If you just need to check your merchant account details and balances, you can use the Merchant account dashboard in Console.

To see a record of your incoming or outgoing transactions, see the payments view in Console.