FAQ

A direct debit is a method of payment. A customer gives an authority to their bank that authorises the payee (your company or organisation) to collect money from their bank account on a particular date without further action being required by the customer.

The customer might use direct debit for fixed amounts at regular intervals – or to pay bills where the amount varies from month to month (like an electricity bill). Direct debits can also be instalment payments.

It’s exactly how it sounds - direct debit payment collection without the paperwork. It enables you / your company or organisation to sign up customers for direct debit collection online, over the phone, or face-to-face.

In other words, paperless direct debit allows you to obtain a direct debit authority from the customer without them having to fill a paper-based direct debit authority form. This is useful because it gives your customers more payment options, which could help improve your sales and payment processes.

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The greatest benefit of direct debit is the ability to vary the amount and date of payments. In this way, direct debit is right for any organisation, charitable institution, or sole trader that regularly collects payments from customers.

Check out the table for some great examples of direct debit uses and benefits.

With Flo2Cash’s direct debit capability, you’ll receive alerts of failed payments, as well as reports and data and analytics to stay on top of your customer collections.

It’s easy. Reach out to our team using the Contact us page and we’ll get you started!

Cleared funds are credited into the nominated bank account on the second business day from when the direct debit payment was scheduled.

Depending on your bank, you should see the funds on the third business day.

Flo2Cash provides only cleared payments to your business. Flo2Cash will automatically inform you of any dishonours and issues that may impact you receiving your direct debit payments.

You can cancel a direct debit via your merchant dashboard on our website. You can also reach out to us directly on the Contact us page, where during business hours our support team will take immediate action for you.

Your customer would need to contact you, their merchant, to cancel their direct debit payment. You would then need to cancel the direct debit payment through the merchant dashboard on our website.

In certain situations, please be aware that your customer could also cancel payments by contacting their bank. If you are facing issues with cancellations, please reach out to the team on the Contact us page.

Yes, provided the merchant has been given authority by the customer to do so.

Absolutely. A customer may have any number of direct debits. Each direct debit has its own unique number and is treated differently.

As a merchant, you’ll be notified about unsuccessful direct debits. This happens in two ways: through the Direct Debit Transaction Report, and through the Direct Debit Dishonour and Settlement Report. Depending on the reason of failure, your client is able to reschedule the payment, or you can organise for Flo2Cash to do this for you.

Flo2Cash offers a total direct debit lifecycle management solution – while banks only give you the ability to initiate a direct debit.

Comparing direct debit offerings – banks vs. Flo2Cash

Not really. A Flo2Cash merchant can direct debit any amount as long as they have been given authority by the customer.

However, it’s important to note that banks have anti-fraud and anti-money laundering software tools. Sometimes, these may stop an account from being direct debited.

Flo2Cash offers you the ability to accept direct debits through paper forms, online web forms, and over the phone.

Yes. Flo2Cash’s direct debit capability means you can generate an email that confirms to your customer that direct debit has been set up, when the first direct debit will take place, and the ongoing frequency of the direct debits.

Merchants that give customers the ability to set up their own direct debit are also sent a notification to inform them that a direct debit authority has come through.

• The Settlement and Dishonour Report – emailed to you daily.
• The Approval Plan Report is sent out when a customer direct debit plan is approved.
• The Ended Plan Report is sent out to you when a customer direct debit plan has ended.

You can also always access a Direct Debit Plan Report through your merchant dashboard.

Anytime! Your Flo2Cash merchant dashboard allows control over your direct debits 24/7.

You can add, edit, and remove information. The merchant dashboard then updates all changes in real time.

Your transactions will be processed at midnight the next day. Normally this will be within 24 hours.

Large volumes of transactions take longer to upload. We recommend that the upload size does not exceed 500 transactions per file. This will avoid ‘time-out’ issues that can occur if there are a vast number of transactions.

You certainly can. Our ABP (Automated Batch Processor) allows you to integrate with your own software / application to automatically upload transactions and retrieve transaction statuses.

Not really - the file names don't impact the upload.

Any files you upload are processed only once. However, if you accidentally upload the same file twice, you must cancel one of them immediately to avoid double processing.

If you use the merchant dashboard to perform batch-processing, you can download your batch file anytime you like. The downloaded file will contain the status of each transaction.

Very! Simply follow our Web Payments Integration Guide. Code samples are available too.

Web payments use standard HTTPS POST. Hence, it’s programming language-independent. Any web programming language that can perform an HTTPS POST is supported.

For risk management, security, and compliance.

Processing via Flo2Cash’s hosted payment page ensures you are Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant with respect to collecting and processing credit card details online.

For you as a merchant to be PCI compliant, you must make sure that no credit card details are not held by any of your systems. And if credit card information is collected online, it must meet the strictest security standards.

Flo2Cash’s hosted payment pages ensure that all payment details are collected and processed on Flo2Cash’s secure page, so that payment details are transmitted and processed safely.

No, Flo2Cash does not support multi-currency acceptance at this stage.

However, if your customer tries to make a payment to you using a foreign currency credit card, the transaction will be processed. You as the merchant will receive the nominated amount in NZ dollars.

Your customer will be charged on their card the amount in his own currency, using the current exchange rates.

For this to happen, your Flo2Cash account must be enabled to accept foreign issued cards.

Flo2Cash currently supports:

• WordPress – eCommerce + WooCommerce
• Magento
• OpenCart
• PrestaShop
• Drupal 6
• Drupal 7
• Joomla

When the hosted payment page has been added to your website, your customers will first see a page for making online payments using their Visa or MasterCard credit or debit card. (This includes China UnionPay and American Express if requested to be enabled.)

Your customer will then be directed to the secure, hosted payment page to enter their card details. When they press submit, the card details will be sent for processing. A processing payment screen will be displayed while the transaction is being processed.

Once processing is completed, the payment result screen will appear. If the customer provided their email address on the payment page, they’ll receive a thank you email and receipt.

These reports are available under 'My reports' in the merchant console and can be setup to be emailed:

• Daily Card Settlement Report (single date): Reports on all settlement values for a given day. You can set this report to be emailed to you regularly.
• Card Transaction Report: Reports all card transactions processed with a range of available filters. You can set this report to be emailed to you regularly.
• Card Settlement Report (date range): Reports on all settlement values for a date range.

If your customer paid using recurring card payments, web payments, or invoice payments, you can process a refund.

1. Log in to your merchant dashboard and go to the card transactions section.
2. Search for the transaction you want to refund by entering the receipt number or transaction ID in the search box.
3. Click on the transaction number and enter the required details in the refund box at the bottom of the page.

You will then need to contact Flo2Cash on the Contact us page to request for the refund function to be activated on your account.

UnionPay is the bank card scheme that operates across mainland China and internationally, issued in more than 30 countries worldwide, and accepted in more than 140 countries and regions around the world.

Any business that has a marketable product for Asian consumers and businesses (across China and other East Asian countries). They should have the ability to accept payments through UnionPay cards.

Expanding the online payment options for a business means they are catering to a wider number of online consumers.

Approximately 30% of cards worldwide are a China UnionPay card (CUP). If businesses aren’t accepting this popular payment card type online, they could be missing out on a lucrative opportunity.

All merchants have a limit on how much money they can accept per transaction and per month. Transaction limits help us screen for suspicious activity so that we can protect the merchant’s financial security.

However, merchants can always contact us to request limit alterations to better suit their business needs.

Flo2Cash currently offers the ability to accept China UnionPay through its e-commerce products.

The main ones are: hosted payment page, shopping carts plugin, e-commerce API, and invoice payments.

Flo2Cash’s e-commerce products let you generate a digital receipt for the completed transaction. Merchants can access their full transaction history on their Flo2Cash merchant dashboard. There, you can also re-generate a digital receipt.

Yes, refunds are possible. You as a merchant simply need to complete a refund form and email it to our customer support team for processing.

Going forward, a merchant can perform a refund themselves in the merchant dashboard.

Flo2Cash has a range of standard reports that help you manage and track payments conducted through Flo2Cash’s tools and systems.

Reports can either be downloaded on an ad hoc basis from the merchant dashboard. Some transactional reports can also be set up as automatic reports that are emailed automatically on a set frequency to one or more designated email addresses.

Absolutely. It’s one of the safest and most secure ways to transact.

Payments made online using a UnionPay card work on a “push payment” principle, where users are actually directed to their personal bank account to authorise the payment.

This differs to the typical online Visa / MasterCard card payment process that most New Zealanders are accustomed to, but is the standard process used by UnionPay.

The customer will see the merchant’s company name on their card statement.

A virtual terminal is a webpage for securely entering card details to accept payments. It's commonly used for online shopping or over-the-phone payments, for example.

It certainly is safe with us. Flo2Cash is a Level 1, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) certified organisation – the key security standard within the payments industry.

Transactions processed through Flo2Cash’s payment gateway are done in a very secure manner. Your security is our policy.

No. Refunding is not performed in the virtual terminal.

Instead, you can go to the transaction history section within your merchant dashboard and perform a refund on a selected transaction there.

Once a transaction has been processed, a receipt will be generated. You can download the receipt by clicking on the receipt number.