We are changing our payment success timeline for Single Euro Payments Area Direct Debit (SEPA DD) from 2 business days to 6 business days. This change better aligns with the SEPA DD scheme rules and guidelines.
How does the new SEPA DD timeline work?
T+0 is the timestamp when a transaction is initiated. The daily cut off for SEPA DD payments is 10:30 CET. Any payment created after 10:30 CET will be considered as taking place the following business day.
For example, if a payment is initiated at 11:00 CET on Tuesday, March 4th, the payment will succeed on Thursday, March 13th. Since the transaction happened after the cut off, T+0 is Wednesday, March 5th.
- Wednesday, March 5th (T+0)
- Thursday, March 6th (T+1)
- Friday, March 7th (T+2)
- Monday, March 10th (T+3)
- Tuesday, March 11th (T+4)
- Wednesday, March 12th (T+5)
- Thursday, March 13th (T+6)
The image below shows the previous SEPA DD payment timeline:
The image below shows the updated SEPA DD payment timeline:
Why are we making this change?
The updated timeline will make payment statuses more accurate. Some other benefits include:
- Improved clarity between failures and disputes: Over 70% of payment failures occurred after payments were prematurely marked as successful and were incorrectly categorized as disputes. By incorporating the recommended five business day waiting period after funds are debited from your customer’s account, we can accurately identify payment failures separate from disputes which are customer-initiated refund requests through their bank.
- Reduced false positives: Bank-initiated returns such as insufficient funds won’t show a Success state before being marked Disputed. Instead, failures will transition directly to a Failed state. This makes Stripe's payment success markers more reliable, reduces operational overhead, and prevents fulfillment errors.
- Reduced double refund fraud: You can only process refunds after payments are marked as successful. We delayed the success status until after the scheme’s failure window, reducing a vulnerability that allowed customers to fraudulently receive refunds. Preventing refunds processing while waiting for failures helps reduce double refund fraud but doesn’t completely remove the problem since customers can still dispute payments in a no-questions-asked 8-week window.
What does the new payment failure timeline look like?
The image below shows the old payment failure timeline. All failures occurring after payment success are categorized as disputes.
The image below shows the new payment failure timeline.
Do you have any tools to help better manage failures?
SEPA DD payments can fail for various reasons, including frozen accounts or insufficient funds. With these changes, you'll gain improved insights into payment failures through detailed failure codes, enabling better decision-making for recovery actions. Review our guide to effectively manage these situations.
Will these payment success timeline changes break my API integration?
No, the timeline changes won't affect your API integration.
Are SEPA DD payouts impacted by the new behavior?
The new settlement logic aligns fund availability with payment success, reducing the risk of debiting your external bank account to cover failed payments.
For example, if funds were previously available in your merchant balance on either T+5 or T+7, they will now settle on T+6.