Yapily Variable Recurring Payments

Collect regular payments on an ongoing basis.

Introduction

Yapily Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) enable you to collect variable payments on an ongoing basis across the UK through a single API integration.

VRPs allow the collection of multiple, variable payments on a continuous basis, without needing to re-authorise each payment. The user is able to set limits as part of the long-lived consent, including the total amount and frequency of the payments.

There are 2 types of VRP:

• Sweeping: transfer of money between 2 accounts belonging to the same person or business entity.
• Non-sweeping: transfer of money for business payments for goods and services.

You can quickly and easily process flexible and recurring payments through using VRPs with both business and consumer accounts.

Yapily’s VRP API also allows you to complete a confirmation of funds check before taking a payment. This confirms whether the funds are available before proceeding with the payment, improving payment success rates.

Coverage

Sweeping

Sweeping VRP is currently available with select banks in the UK only.

Sweeping VRPs are subject to the following conditions:

• The source account needs to be a personal or business current account
• The destination account must be able to receive a domestic payment
• Both are UK Sterling accounts
• The transaction is between 2 accounts belonging to the same person or legal entity

Non-sweeping

Non-sweeping VRPs are only available with NatWest bank in the UK.

Non-sweeping APIs are not currently mandated by OBIE, but Yapily is exploring this use case in a pilot supported by NatWest Bank. It is restricted to certain merchants enabled by NatWest.

Advantages

VRPs offer 4 main benefits over Direct Debit, standing orders or card continuous payment authority (CPA):

1. Save costs

Direct account-to-account VRPs remove payment fees associated with payment processing.

2. Increase efficiency

VRPs use Faster Payment Service so the payment arrives instantly. This reduces time spent managing payment errors, and streamlines recurring payment collection.

3. Reduce risk

All VRP mandates are created and authorised using Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).

4. Offer flexibility

VRPs provide transparency and flexibility to the user. The payers only need to provide their consent once when setting up the payment. The user is in control, and can change the payment frequency and amount at any time.

Applications

Sweeping VRPs offer advantages for the following payment offerings:

Intelligent savings: Automate sending money to a savings account to maximise its potential.

Smart overdrafts: Automatically pay off an outstanding overdraft in one account from another account with a positive balance.

Current account switching: Allow consumers to improve their financial wellbeing and encourage account movement of funds to higher interest bearing current accounts.

Account top ups: Streamline top up experiences where the funds are automatically transferred based on set logic.

Non-sweeping VRPs have the potential to enrich the following areas once established:

Subscriptions: Save time and costs by using VRPs for subscription payments.

Charity donations: Accept variable recurring payments from charitable donations.

One click checkout: Streamline payment conversion with one click payments each time when shopping with the same merchant.

Billing for usage-based services: Collect payments for utility bills, cloud storage, or bandwidth usage that are charged based on usage.

Credit and loan repayments: Automate unsecured loan and credit balance repayment based on the borrower's affordability.

Don't see your use case? Let us know how you would like to use Yapily Variable Recurring Payments.

End user journey

The VRP payments experience can be embedded into any application. You build and self-host the user facing screens, giving you full ownership and control over the experience in your application, with the Yapily VRP Payments API powering the payments behind the scenes.

Note: We recommend you follow our PIS UX guidelines for examples of best practices when building the user facing screens.

Note: Banks use different methods to authenticate and collect consent from users. Yapily supports all user authorisation flows and you may need to implement multiple user authorisation flows depending on which banks you want to integrate with.

Get started

See our sweeping variable recurring payment tutorial to explore a sample integration with Yapily VRP.

Try our demo app to complete the Yapily Variable Recurring Payments flow for yourself with your real banking credentials.