> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.paybyrd.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# SEPA

The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) simplifies payments within and across member countries. It establishes and enforces banking standards that allow direct debiting of any EUR-denominated bank account within the SEPA region.

Businesses must collect their customer's name and bank account number in IBAN format to debit an account. Customers must accept a mandate that gives the business authorization to debit the account during the payment flow. We will generate this mandate for businesses to present to their customers.

## How it works

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/paybyrd/_2RsTPIIlIKxMrgj/accept-payments/img/SEPA-payment-flow.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=_2RsTPIIlIKxMrgj&q=85&s=5a0a0bdd2f61d2de07f058906e32d0cc" alt="Flowchart depicting SEPA payment flow" width="3152" height="1240" data-path="accept-payments/img/SEPA-payment-flow.png" />

SEPA is an asynchronous payment method. When you create a payment, Paybyrd receives confirmation that it was created, and the transaction enters a processing status while waiting for the customer to accept the debit mandate. As soon as the customer accepts the debit, we will continue the process. Once the debit is confirmed or rejected, Paybyrd receives a notification and updates the payment status to succeeded or failed.

<Note>SEPA Direct Debit is a delayed notification payment method. This means that it can take up to 14 business days to receive notification on the success or failure payment after you initiate. The average confirmation takes five business days.</Note>

## Create payment

The following example shows a simple request to create a SEPA payment and its response:

```bash theme={null}
curl --request POST \
 --url https://gateway.paybyrd.com/api/v2/payment \
 --header 'Accept: application/json' \
 --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 --header 'x-api-key: {your_api_key}' \
 --data '
{
 "type":"OnlineTransfer",
 "amount": "10.00",
 "currency": "EUR",
 "brand":"SEPA",
 "iban": "PT55003506519623339578249",
 "email": "peter@parker.com",
 "country": "PRT"
}'
```

```json theme={null}
{
 "type": "OnlineTransfer",
 "currency": "EUR",
 "brand": "SEPA",
 "action": {
   "type": "redirect",
   "url": "https://webapp-redirect-api-stg.azurewebsites.net/api/v1/Redirect/677b2968-41b5-4886-94f6-c77c2d4791bf"
 },
 "code": "BYRD207",
 "description": "Pending redirect",
 "transactionId": "677b2968-41b5-4886-94f6-c77c2d4791bf",
 "amount": "10.00"
}
```

See the full API reference [here](/api-reference/payments/create-payment).

Check the `code` field to know whether the transaction was accepted. A successful scenario returns the code `BYRD207`. You can find the list of all status codes in the [Respone code reference](/api-reference/api-code-reference).