SEPA API: How to embed euro payments with Modulr

Modulr By Modulr on 19 December 2023   •   12 mins read
<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >SEPA API: How to embed euro payments with Modulr</span>

If you’re looking for a SEPA API, you might find it difficult to move euro payments across borders quickly and easily because:

  • Processing digital payments through legacy infrastructure requires manual tasks, like file uploads, which are time consuming and error prone.

  • Your current payment provider processes transactions in batches, creating settlement delays.

  • You lack visibility on the status of submitted SEPA payments, which creates a poor experience for your customers who are also in the dark about their transactions.

  • Your international SEPA payments have a low acceptance rate because some receiving banks consider your IBAN “foreign,” even though transactions remain within the European Union.

The right SEPA API can solve your challenges and more. To help you understand how you can embed euro payments in your platform, we sat down with our payment API experts for their insights. In this article, we’ll cover:

Modulr enables companies across Europe to embed SEPA payments directly into their platform and software. Contact us today to see how we can help you transform the way your business handles euro payments for you and your customers.  

How to embed SEPA payments with Modulr’s API

Modulr is a regulated Electronic Money Institution operating in both the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA). Our application programming interface (API) empowers businesses of all sizes to make, receive, and manage one-off or recurring payments from the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), directly within their platform.

In addition to using our connection to both SEPA Instant Credit Transfer and SEPA Credit Transfer schemes, our customers can access and embed a full suite of payment tools from our API, including:

Here’s how you can get started with our embedded payments API for payments within Europe.

Share your vision with us

We’re ready to help you transform your payments capabilities – all you need to do is ask. Contact us today to set up an introductory call with one of our experts. We’ll learn about your needs and walk you through the different possibilities we offer. We’ll also grant you the API access key to our Sandbox so your product and IT leads can discover our technology.  

Get your dedicated team of experts

Once you decide Modulr is the right choice for your SEPA and other embedded payment needs, we’ll assign you a dedicated team to help you on your journey. This “squad” of product, IT, business and compliance experts will guide and support you as you build your first integration, and be there for you as you launch. Whenever you have a question or are formulating a new payment feature you want to add in the future, they’ll be your first point of contact.

Integrate your system with ours via a single API library

When you’re ready to build, you’ll integrate your system with ours through the API. Our API is the access point to a comprehensive library of embedded payment tools. We work hard to ensure our API documentation and guides make it easy to understand just what Modulr is capable of. With our docs, sandbox, and the support of your squad, you’ll get your embedded SEPA payment solution up and running in no time.

Start making and accepting SEPA payments from your platform

You can test your SEPA solution in our sandbox environment. Once you’re satisfied with the results, you can implement your solution in your production environment and go live. From that moment on, you and your customers will submit, receive and manage SEPA payments directly from your platform or software. During this migration, your Modulr squad will be there in close support, so you and your customers can start transactions within the EEA without disruption.

You can add SEPA payments to your platform, even if you’re based in the UK. Our system can easily support this requirement. To enable them, it’s a matter of adding a few lines of code and modifying your agreements with us.

Contact us today to add SEPA payments to your UK-based business.

Why choose Modulr as your SEPA payment provider

There are many benefits to embedding SEPA payments in your platform or software. Here are five of the biggest reasons why customers choose Modulr for transacting in the Single Euro Payments Area:

Connect to SEPA Instant Credit Transfer for payments that settle in 10 seconds

We use SEPA Instant Credit Transfer as the default payment route for euro transfers. This means your counterparty can receive the funds in as little as 10 seconds if their bank accepts payment through this channel. If a recipient's bank doesn't support SEPA Instant, our system will send the payment through the SEPA Credit Transfer, which can settle in as little as 15 minutes during business days before 14:00 CET. If submitted after that time, funds settle the next Business Banking day.

Curious about how this looks in practice? Our earned-wage-access customers use our SEPA Instant Credit Transfer capabilities to help workers receive accumulated salary before payday. With Modulr, these platforms can send requested funds via SEPA Instant so workers can get their earned wage within 10 seconds, anytime of the day or night. If a worker's bank doesn't participate in SEPA Instant, Modulr will automatically send funds via SEPA Credit, with settlement happening within two days.

Send and receive SEPA payments 24/7 via your platform with our API

You won't have to depend on an external banking portal or file upload to manage SEPA payments with Modulr. Our API lets you offer SEPA Instant Credit on demand through your platform 24/7, without you needing to reinvent your user interface (UI). This enables you to turn payments into part of your product offering so you can create better customer experiences, enhance your value proposition to new and existing customers alike, and even generate new revenue streams by offering payments as an extra service.

Our system never stops running (see our uptime here), so you and your customers can submit payment requests at any time of day, 365 days a year. With SEPA Instant, you can send or receive up to EUR 100,000 (higher-value transactions will default to SEPA credit). You'll also get immediate notification as soon as the funds process, so you can see which scheme was used.

For example, B2C lenders use Modulr to provide instant euro credits to borrowers. When a lending platform submits a SEPA Instant Credit Transfer through Modulr, the borrower can receive the funds almost immediately. With Modulr, the lender doesn't have to worry if the receiving bank doesn't participate in SEPA Instant because, in this case, funds can automatically reroute to SEPA Credit instead.

This embedded solution also works if you're a B2B2B or B2B2C company, so you can keep your customers on your platform and have them make and receive payments without ever needing to leave your website or software platform.

Gain visibility on your SEPA transactions via instant notifications

With some banks and providers, it might take hours or even a whole day before you receive a SEPA payment confirmation. This delay can be frustrating, especially if you and your customers depend on the confirmation to close a business deal or move to the next step in a product journey.

With Modulr, you can solve this problem by receiving real-time updates on your payments, such as when an outbound or inbound payment settles. These notifications come through our API webhooks and inform you of the details behind a payment event as soon as they happen. You can use these notifications to:

  • Automate reconciliation in your ERP or accounting software.

  • Update your customers about the status of their payments.

Take accounting platforms, for example, that enable businesses to calculate their liabilities. Our SEPA API enables their customers to finish the final steps of this process – making and reconciling payments – without having to leave their software or website. With Modulr, they can deliver a more comprehensive customer experience that adds value to their existing product.

Discover how Modulr's API can help make your accounts payable error free.

Access our entire suite of embedded product tools to make payments part of your product

SEPA payments are a great way to improve the payment experience for your customers, but with our embedded payments solutions, you can do much more. With Modulr, you can turn payments into a part of your product or service, unlock new revenue streams, and make your business more attractive to customers by:

  • Offering dedicated payment accounts for each of your customers or activities.

  • Issuing payment cards that let your customers transact through the Visa and Mastercard networks.

  • Creating complex payment flows with our API and rules-based logic.

  • Submitting, receiving, and managing payments also in the UK through Faster Payments, Bacs, CHAPS and Direct Debits.

  • Making more efficient payments with Open Banking Payment Initiation and Confirmation of Payee in the UK and making one-off, ad hoc or recurring payments in both the UK and EEA.

For example, travel tech companies like Pax2pay turn to Modulr’s embedded payment solutions to innovate in a competitive, global industry. They use our virtual cards, payment accounts, Faster Payments and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer to help Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) receive funds faster and facilitate transactions using industry-preferred standards.

Who is Modulr best for?

Businesses of all types and sizes use our embedded payment tools and API to reinvent their payment experience, including:

  • B2B
  • B2C
  • B2B2C
  • From large corporates to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

We help these companies serve both their customers and their partners with payment solutions that enable growth. These are some industries where we can help the most:

  • Marketplaces and merchant services that need to shorten transaction cycles with more efficient and faster payments while staying on top of reconciliation.

  • Traditional financial service and fintech companies with a desire to quickly launch new products. They use our modular building blocks to make saving, lending and transacting faster while creating a more engaging customer experience.

  • Payroll and wage advance companies like Salary Finance and BrightPay use Modulr's payment API to allow employers to make instant payroll payments to workers.

  • Travel companies wanting to stay on top of reconciliation, improve security, and generate revenue while still using industry-standard payment mediums.

  • Growing companies with high-ticket or high-volume transactions that need to scale their business without sacrificing operational efficiency or customer experience.

Ready to see how we can help you be the market leader in your industry? Let’s start talking today.

How Modulr’s SEPA API can help a payroll company pay salaries instantly

If you’re an international payroll provider that wants to make your product more attractive to employers who may be calculating payments in both euros and pounds, Modulr’s SEPA API can help.

For example, you can embed Faster Payments and SEPA Instant Credit Transfers, to allow employers to make payroll payments directly from your platform.

You can also incorporate other Modulr features, such as payment accounts and local IBANs. This combination can help you create salary payment accounts in different countries.

This way, when your employer partners process payroll payments, they’ll know that salaries will go into the employees’ accounts as quickly as possible and without transaction errors. With Modulr, you can add more value to your partners, helping to reduce your churn rates and even boost your revenues at the same time.

What to look for in a SEPA API provider

To get the most of this technology, our experts recommend working with a SEPA API provider that offers the right functionalities to make fewer errors and faster settlements. You’ll want to have the following features to ensure you can take full advantage of not only the default SEPA credit transfer system, but the faster SEPA Instant Credit scheme.

Connections to SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

The Single Euro Payments Area has two processing engines: SEPA Credit Transfer and the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, which provides 24/7 near-instant payment settlement. You may want to look for a provider that can give you access to the quicker scheme so you and your customers can benefit from the fastest payment settlements in Europe.

An API that keeps you up to date with transactions as they happen

Your finance department and customers should always be up-to-date on their payment activities. So, look for an API that offers notification capabilities through webhooks. These instant alerts allow you to reconcile transactions as they happen and keep your customers informed on their payment activity within your platform.

Tools that go beyond making and receiving payments

Making and receiving SEPA payments should be just part of the capabilities your provider offers. To get the most out of your SEPA payments, look for a provider that can scale with you and offer a wide range of features, such as:

  • Dedicated accounts for you and your customers.

  • Card issuance.

  • Access to other payment schemes.

  • An API you can build payment flows around.  

Bring the power of embedded SEPA payments to your business with Modulr

Embedding a SEPA API can change the way you and your customers make and receive payments in Europe. SEPA payments are only a part of Modulr's embedded payments solutions that are transforming companies and industries across Europe.

If you’re ready for payments to be a driver of your company’s success, we’re ready to help. Contact us now to begin the journey.