Direct Debits on Griffin accounts

A Direct Debit lets an organisation collect money from a bank account with the account holder's ongoing authority, the standard UK mechanism for bills, subscriptions, and repayments. On Griffin, Direct Debits work in one direction: organisations your customers have authorised can collect from Griffin accounts. You cannot use Griffin to collect Direct Debits from accounts at other banks; see the Bacs overview for what is and isn't supported.

Three parties are involved in every Direct Debit:

• The payer: your customer, whose Griffin account is debited.
• The originator: the organisation collecting the money (sometimes called the service user). Each originator is identified in the Bacs scheme by a six-digit service user number.
• The paying bank: Griffin. We receive collections from the scheme, check them, and debit the account.

Direct Debit Instructions (mandates)

A Direct Debit Instruction, or mandate, is the payer's authority for one originator to collect from one account. The payer sets it up with the originator (for example, by completing a form on the originator's website), and the originator lodges the instruction electronically through the Bacs scheme. Griffin receives the instruction, checks it against the account, and creates a mandate resource on the account.

No action is needed from you or your customer for a mandate to appear: if the originator lodges a valid instruction, the mandate simply shows up on the account. If the instruction fails Griffin's checks (for example, the account details are wrong or the account cannot accept Direct Debits), it is returned to the originator and no mandate is created. See Direct Debit mandates for what to tell an end-user in that situation.

Mandate lifecycle

A mandate is in one of three states:

• active: the originator may collect against it.
• cancelled: the payer, the originator, or Griffin has cancelled it. Cancellation is permanent: collections against a cancelled mandate are returned, and the originator must lodge a new instruction to collect again.
• expired: the mandate lapsed without being cancelled, for example through prolonged disuse.

Your customer can cancel a mandate at any time, through the API or in the Griffin app for accounts that have it. When a mandate is cancelled, Griffin notifies the originator automatically through the scheme. When an account is closed, all of its active mandates are cancelled automatically.

The collection cycle

Collections follow the Bacs three-day cycle. Before collecting, the originator must give the payer advance notice of the amount and date. The originator then submits the collection on day 1; Griffin receives it on day 2, when the payment and its admission become visible on the account; and the account is debited on the morning of day 3.

Because the collection is visible on day 2, you and your customer have a day's notice of the amount that will leave the account. Direct Debit collections walks through the API events, including what happens when an account cannot fund a collection.

The Direct Debit Guarantee

Every Direct Debit is covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee:

• If an error is made in the payment of a Direct Debit (the wrong amount, the wrong date, or a collection without valid authority), the payer is entitled to an immediate refund from the paying bank.
• If a payer receives a refund they were not entitled to, they must pay it back when the paying bank asks for it.
• The guarantee is unlimited: there is no time limit and no cap on the amount.
• The payer can cancel a mandate at any time. Cancellation only stops the collections: it does not release the payer from any obligation to pay the originator, for example under a contract. Anything still owed must be settled another way.

The guarantee drives most of the obligations you take on when your customers' accounts accept Direct Debits: chiefly, routing refund requests to Griffin promptly and correctly. See Direct Debit refunds and indemnity claims.

Who is responsible for what

Duty	Griffin	You (customer)	Your customer	Originator
Lodge / return / cancel mandates at the scheme	✅			Lodges the instruction
Pay/no-pay checks and day-3 processing	✅
Surface mandates & transactions to end-users		✅
Keep accounts funded for collections		✅ (product design)	✅
Route Direct Debit Guarantee refund requests promptly	✅	✅	Raises the request
Execute refunds & raise indemnity claims	✅			Indemnifies
Advance notice of amount/date changes				✅
Cancel a mandate	Via API/ops	Offers cancellation UX	Can cancel any time	Can cancel