Gateways

We are pleased to announce that our newest gateway integration adds another Direct Debit option for Australian users with very affordable rates.  Mint Payments is an API-based (no CSV files to upload) gateway through NAB.  Their fees are very reasonable.  Mint Payments is our recommended Direct Debit provider for Australian users.  They also have credit card processing available for NA and AU merchants.  Find out more on our Mint Payments support page.

UPDATE: Mint are no longer accepting new applications for Direct Debit.  We are gutted!

Europe have been big on account-to-account payments for many years.  With the introduction of the Euro currency and the “Eurozone” banking integration, it is now possible to use Direct Debits to collect funds from a customer’s bank account from almost anywhere in Europe.  The “Single Euro Payments Area” (or SEPA) system uses a common XML file format (we just love standardisation!) that most banks in the Eurozone will accept.

Unfortunately it is an Upload type that you have to manually upload to your bank’s online banking system (we would prefer a direct API approach) – but beggars can’t be choosers here!  uCollect will email you when you have collections to initiate, and once you have downloaded the XML file for your bank uCollect will mark your invoice as paid in Xero.

Xero has had a Payment Gateway for Stripe available for a while now – and it works nicely.  Stripe is a great tool for small businesses wanting to collect credit card payments.  Their fixed fees and no monthly charges can actually make it cheaper than using traditional gateways or Paypal – not to mention significantly easier!!

So we knew that getting Stripe working with uCollect was a high priority – in fact, we expedited this over several other features and gateways as we knew it would be great for many businesses all over the world!

Now you can use Stripe to automatically collect your Xero invoice payments on the due date.  To do this we need to know your Stripe Live Secret Key (from your Stripe Dashboard) – enter this into the Payment Gateway definition screen under Edit Organisation.  Once you have setup the gateway then you can assign Stripe as the collection method for any contact.  When assigning them you can either select an existing Customer from the Stripe database, or create one on the fly (and enter their Credit Card details).  uCollect does not store the credit card detail in our system – we send it direct to Stripe who returns to us a customer token that we use to initiate collections from.  It’s completely secure.

Stripe is available in USA, Canada, Australia and most of Europe (sorry Kiwis – not in NZ yet).  If Stripe is not available in your country then please go to this page and ask them to get on it!!

EziDebit is one of New Zealand and Australia’s leading third-party provider of Direct Debit and Credit Card processing.  They were our first choice to provide a non-bank interface for automated collection of Direct Debit transactions.  Many small businesses can’t get approved as Direct Debit initiators or on-line Credit Card merchants through the regular banks and EziDebit provides an affordable process that makes it easy to use Direct Debits in your business.

Because EziDebit have API access to their engine uCollect can send your transaction request direct to EziDebit securely over the internet, meaning you do not have to get involved.  You simply set up the interface (you need to email EziDebit for an authenication key) and then tell uCollect the customer ID that EziDebit have assigned – and the rest is magic!  uCollect checks your Xero ledger daily to see if there are any collections pending and sends them direct to EziDebit for processing. It marks the invoice paid anticipating the arrival of the funds in a few days time.  It truly is effortless.  Give uCollect a go with our low subscription price (as low as US$13/month) and 30 day free trial.

To have someone from EziDebit call you please simply click here.