The Direct Debit process

Direct debit mandates follow a streamlined process that may take at least 2 hours from activation to when they are available for debits. These steps are:

• Mandate creation

• Mandate activation

• Setup for debit

• Transactions

Mandate creation

The first step is the creation of a mandate using the API defined in this collection. As soon as the mandate is created, you should inform the customer of the next steps about how to activate the mandate.

From a best practices point of view, the customer should be informed on your app, by email, and SMS.

Mandate activation

Activation of the mandate is usually done by the transfer of a N50 (or N100 for banks where the minimum transfer amount is N100) to designated bank accounts operated by NIBSS. The customer has 168 hours (7 days) to send this amount if not the mandate is automatically canceled.

Immediately the activation amount is received at either of the banks, the mandate is automatically activated. However, it is not available for debit at this time.

Banks for mandate activation

The following are the authorized banks which customers should use for direct debit mandate activation.

Fidelity Bank	Paystack Titan
Account: 9020025928 Bank: Fidelity Bank Plc. You can transfer from USSD, mobile app or internet banking	Account: 9880218357 Bank: Paystack-Titan You can transfer from your mobile app and internet banking

Setup for debit

There are usually some backend processes done by NIBSS that then processes the accounts for debit and this may take up to 2 hours before completion. If you try to debit the mandate before this time, it would return an error message such as "do not honor".