How can I electronically transfer money to another account using Bank Transfer (BACS)

Question

I'm working on a project where we collect payments from users using credit/debit/PayPal payments.

The service is taking payments from users on behalf of a 3rd party organisation. Once we take the payment, minus fees, we want to transfer the amount to the organisations bank account.

For now, what we can do is pay the organisation using Online Banking BACS bank transfer.

But I would like to know if there is a way to do this automatically using an API.

If we need to somehow register the 3rd parties bank account details before making transfers, this is fine. We just want to automate the whole process, since at the moment the transfer is a manual step.

Are there any gateways or APIs I can use for this? In the UK?

Answer 1

As this is still un-answered I'll throw my hat into the ring.

For the benefit of non-UK users, the UK has a central clearing system called Bacs, which is run by the major banks in the country. However, companies can also makes submissions directly to that clearing system, by using Bacs Software.

There are a number of companies that sell on-premise and online services/APIs that allow you to send money directly via Bacs (and collect Direct Debits).

DISCLAIMER: I currently work for a software company (Bottomline Technologies) which sells a Bacs API - I won't mention the product name and to see alternative companies you can simply Google for 'bacs software api'

Hope this helps

Answer 2

You are going in the wrong direction. You should talk to payment processors (which may or may not include your bank) about the business considerations, which probably are more important than the technological considerations. Generally you can expect something somewhat reasonable that you will (after fiddling with it enough) be able to convince to work. It doesn't matter whether this involves some sort of api library, soap calls, or other communication method.

If you honestly consider having the technological considerations more important than the business considerations, then just go with Paypal and don't write your own shopping cart stuff at all. This is easier to use and will do more of the heavy lifting for you, but which will also probably charge you more.

Once you create a real shopping cart and start handling payments yourself (i.e. taking in CC information and sending it to a payment processor), you start getting into a mess of legal and technical concerns involving PCI compliance and the like, which will apply regardless of your choice of payment processor*.

*This is US-specific, but I bet the UK has something similar.