Inbound Credits and Debits

The following scenarios describe the payment transaction flows between you as the homing bank and Electrum.

Successful Inbound Credit or Debit

inbound pay success

Electrum receives a file from BankservAfrica containing a bundle of debit and credit transactions to be processed under the specific EFT payment sub-service.

Electrum determines what type of file a particular payment comes from and decides:

Whether a payment must be processed the same day or on another day.

Whether the payment is a credit (to be processed immediately) or a debit (to be processed later in the day).

Once the transaction is ready to be sent to the you (action date is reached and – in the case of debits – the allowed processing window is reached) Electrum sends either:

An inboundCreditTransfer request to the /inbound/credit-transfer endpoint, in the case of a credit transaction (CreditTransfer schema; see below), or

An inboundDirectDebit request to the inbound/direct-debit endpoint in the case of a debit transaction (DirectDebit schema; see below.)

The message is sent via an Electrum store-and-forward (SAF) queue which repeats the message until you return a positive response.

CreditTransfer Schema

required	object (MessageIdentifiers) Holds a point-to-point unique message identification string as well as a message's creation date time.
	object (SupplementaryData) A list of key-value pairs to support adding any supplementary/additional data to an Electrum Regulated Payments API message.
required	object (TransactionIdentifiers) Holds a series of identifiers to identify the transaction or an individual message that is part of a transaction.
required	object (TransactionAmounts)
required	object (Party) This model is the basic representation of a Party. It is expanded on depending on whether the party is a person or an organisation.
required	object (PaymentAccount) Representation of an account for payment purposes. Note that at least one of `identification` or `proxy` is expected to be present.
required	object (InstitutionIdentification)
required	object (Party) This model is the basic representation of a Party. It is expanded on depending on whether the party is a person or an organisation.
	object (PaymentAccount) Representation of an account for payment purposes. Note that at least one of `identification` or `proxy` is expected to be present.
required	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	Array of objects (Instruction) >= 0 items Further information related to the processing of the payment instruction, provided by the initiating party, and intended for the creditor agent.
	Array of objects (InstitutionIdentification) <= 3 characters Agents between the debtor's agent and the creditor's agent. Usage: If more than one intermediary agent is present, then IntermediaryAgent1 identifies the agent between the DebtorAgent and the IntermediaryAgent2
required	object (CreditTransferPaymentScheme) Designates which scheme a credit transfer is associated with and describes scheme-specific information for the credit transfer.
	object (PaymentTypeInformation)
	Array of objects (InstitutionIdentification) <= 3 characters Agent(s) between the debtor's agent and the instructing agent.
	object (PurposeType) Specifies the underlying reason for the payment transaction
	object (RemittanceInformation)
schema required	string Value: "CreditTransfer"
settlementDate	string <date> Date on which the amount of money ceases to be available to the agent that owes it and when the amount of money becomes available to the agent to which it is due.
	object (TaxInformation)

DirectDebit Schema

required	object (MessageIdentifiers) Holds a point-to-point unique message identification string as well as a message's creation date time.
	object (SupplementaryData) A list of key-value pairs to support adding any supplementary/additional data to an Electrum Regulated Payments API message.
required	object (TransactionIdentifiers) Holds a series of identifiers to identify the transaction or an individual message that is part of a transaction.
required	object (TransactionAmounts)
required	object (Party) This model is the basic representation of a Party. It is expanded on depending on whether the party is a person or an organisation.
	object (PaymentAccount) Representation of an account for payment purposes. Note that at least one of `identification` or `proxy` is expected to be present.
required	object (InstitutionIdentification)
required	object (Party) This model is the basic representation of a Party. It is expanded on depending on whether the party is a person or an organisation.
required	object (PaymentAccount) Representation of an account for payment purposes. Note that at least one of `identification` or `proxy` is expected to be present.
required	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	Array of objects (InstitutionIdentification) <= 3 characters Agents between the debtor's agent and the creditor's agent. If more than one intermediary agent is present, then IntermediaryAgent1 identifies the agent between the DebtorAgent and the IntermediaryAgent2.
	object (MandateInformation) Provides details of the direct debit mandate signed between the creditor and the debtor. NOTE: This model is a work in progress and may change. In particular, it lacks properties relating to mandate amendments which we may need in the future. Note also that this model is not relevant to the `ZA_EFT` scheme, and therefore Electrum will not do any special processing for these fields for EFT (e.g. Electrum cannot honour tracking days for EFT payments).
required	object (DirectDebitPaymentScheme) Designates which scheme a direct debit is associated with and describes scheme-specific information for the direct debit.
	object (PaymentTypeInformation)
	object (PurposeType) Specifies the underlying reason for the payment transaction
	object (RemittanceInformation)
requestedCollectionDate	string <date> Date and time at which the creditor requests that the amount of money is to be collected from the debtor.
schema required	string Value: "DirectDebit"
sequenceType	string (SequenceTypeCode) Identifies the direct debit sequence: `FRST` : First collection of a series of direct debit instructions. `RCUR` : Direct debit instruction where the debtor's authorisation is used for regular direct debit transactions initiated by the creditor. `FNAL` : Final collection of a series of direct debit instructions. `OOFF` : Direct debit instruction where the debtor's authorisation is used to initiate one single direct debit transaction. `RPRE` : Collection used to represent previously reversed or returned direct debit transactions. Enum: "FRST" "RCUR" "FNAL" "OOFF" "RPRE"
settlementDate	string <date> Date on which the amount of money ceases to be available to the agent that owes it and when the amount of money becomes available to the agent to which it is due.

You respond with an HTTP status code 202.

Note

Electrum sends these EFT messages via a SAF queue (while not doing so for similar messages processed in RTC or RPP) because of the assumed settlement principle in EFT. Because BankservAfrica assumes approval of the transaction, Electrum will continue sending the request to the bank to ensure the message is delivered and the transaction will be processed.

After you have successfully processed the transaction (debited or credited the relevant account), you send Electrum:

An inboundCreditTransferResponse message to the /inbound/credit-transfer-response endpoint (PaymentStatusReport schema) in the case of a credit payment.

An inboundDirectDebitResponse message to the /inbound/direct-debit-response endpoint (PaymentStatusReport schema) in the case of a debit payment.

PaymentStatusReport Schema

required	object (MessageIdentifiers) Holds a point-to-point unique message identification string as well as a message's creation date time.
	object (SupplementaryData) A list of key-value pairs to support adding any supplementary/additional data to an Electrum Regulated Payments API message.
required	object (MessageIdentifiers) Holds a point-to-point unique message identification string as well as a message's creation date time.
required	object (TransactionIdentifiers) Holds a series of identifiers to identify the transaction or an individual message that is part of a transaction.
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (InstitutionIdentification)
	object (OriginalTransactionData) Contains key elements related to the original transaction that is being referred to.
required	object (PaymentStatusReportPaymentScheme) Designates which scheme a payment status report is associated with and describes scheme-specific information for the payment status report.
schema required	string Value: "PaymentStatusReport"
required	object (Status)

Electrum returns an HTTP status code of 202 to acknowledge receipt of the PaymentStatusReport.

Note

Electrum will not forward the PaymentStatusReport to BankservAfrica in the case of a successful payment. Here, Electrum simply consumes the PaymentStatusReport, acknowledges it, and updates the correct payment status in the Electrum processing engine.

Error Handling

No Acknowledgment File From Electrum to BankservAfrica

If Electrum does not respond to a file sent from BankservAfrica, BankservAfrica will notify you that a file has been sent. You must notify Electrum. BankservAfrica and Electrum will resolve the issue amongst themselves. BankservAfrica will then resend the file and the transaction will proceed as for a successful transaction.

Note

Electrum must ensure that the resent file is not processed twice.

Negative Acknowledgement from Homing Bank

inbound pay NACK from HB

If Electrum receives a negative acknowledgement (NACK, i.e., an HTTP 5xx or retryable HTTP 4xx) from you in response to a CreditTransfer or DirectDebit, then Electrum will continue to send the message via a SAF queue. If Electrum does not receive an acknowledgement (HTTP 202) before the reconciliation window closes, then this transaction will be considered a reconciliation exception.

Note

Electrum will continue to send the message via a SAF queue for all HTTP 5xx and 4xx NACKs that are considered transient (i.e., recoverable). If Electrum receives an unretryable HTTP 4xx NACK, then Electrum will stop sending the message and the error will be resolved manually.

No Acknowledgement from Homing Bank

inbound pay no response from HB

If Electrum does not receive an HTTP message from you in response to a sent transaction, then Electrum will continue to send the transaction via a SAF queue. If there is still no response by the time the reconciliation window closes, then the transaction will be considered a reconciliation exception and must be handled as part of the Back Office/reconciliation process.

No PaymentStatusReport from Homing Bank

inbound pay NACK from HB

If Electrum does not receive a PaymentStatusReport message from you before the reconciliation window closes, the transaction will be considered a reconciliation exception.

No HTTP Response from Electrum

No http from Electrum

If you send a PaymentStatusReport and do not receive an HTTP ACK or NACK from Electrum, then you can retry the transaction up to a set number of times before the transaction is considered failed. The failed transaction will be considered a reconciliation exception.

Unpaid EFT Transaction

inbound pay unpaid

If Electrum receives a PaymentStatusReport message containing status code RJCT, it means that the payment could not be actioned. Electrum will generate an unpaid transaction and store the transaction in the database. This transaction will be included in the next same-day file with a reason code for why it is an unpaid.

The unpaid transaction will go via BankservAfrica back to the originating bank to be reversed. See the unpaid transaction journey here.