Integration options

This guide facilitates merchants in seamlessly integrating RecovaPRO into their digital applications, enabling them to secure full consent, establish secure electronic direct debit mandates, and initiate protected direct debit payments from their customers' bank accounts. Once the integration process is finalized, merchants gain the capability to generate secure and consented electronic mandates and initiate both scheduled and one-time debit payments directly from their customer's bank accounts. To integrate RecovaPRO into your web or mobile app, the following steps need to be taken for activation:

• Setup your Profile on the dedicated SaaS Portal
• Select your use case
• Setup Payouts method
• Select additional “opt-in” services (if desired)
• Enable Dispute Management correspondences - coming soon
• Configure Webhook settings for RecovaPRO events
• Enable your choice of Advanced notification system (email | webhook | SMS | WhatsApp) - coming soon
• Start using the Web Portal or start integrating the SDK or APIs using our sample data before switching to using real customer information.

As always, our Product Engineering Support is just an email or a ping away 😉.

SDK

The CreditChek RecovaPRO SDK employs secured & robust vanilla JavaScript technology that enables faster digital integration for any merchant who desires swift tailor-made solution integration for their customers, which includes secured, automated consented electronic mandate setup capabilities, detailed repayment breakdown, and payment schedule from customer’s bank account(s) directly into their existing digital products or applications.

API

The CreditChek RecovaPRO API provides comprehensive endpoints for many forms of digital lending or post-paid service activities to seamlessly integrate secured and reliable automated direct debit functionalities into their platforms and products, through electronic consent or mandates, reliable manual or automated repayment scheduling(collection), onward settlements, and credit-risk management to protect your business and ensure it thrives.

Categories of e-Mandates

To accommodate diverse lending merchants and post-paid services use cases, an e-mandate could be either of the following;

Variable

This offers convenience for both businesses and customers, as it allows for automatic payments to be made without the need for manual intervention or invoice reconciliation. This type of e-mandate covers direct debit arrangements that often require the customer to authorize the merchant or service provider to withdraw funds directly from their bank account, either on an ongoing basis or for specific transactions. This automated arrangement includes the frequency of payments and the maximum or total amounts that can be debited throughout the agreed lifetime of the e-mandate arrangement. However, customers need to monitor their bank statements regularly to ensure that the debited amounts are accurate and authorized.

Fixed

Fixed direct debit arrangements are commonly used for recurring payments, such as rent, mortgage payments, insurance premiums, subscription services, loan repayments, and membership fees. By setting up fixed direct debit payments, customers can automate their recurring financial obligations, ensuring they are paid on time without manual intervention. It outlines the terms and conditions of the payment arrangement, including the frequency of payments and the fixed amount to be debited for each transaction.

e-Mandates Authorization

For benefits of flexibility and convenience, there are two(2) ways e-mandates requests are created and authorized on the platform, largely influenced by how the target (debtors) bank accepts honouring such request on record:

Micro-deposit

Accepting a time-bound, real-time inflow of NGN50 from the target customer's bank account into an auto-generated bank account, which serves as full authorization to consent and place the e-Mandate on the debtor’s bank record. The transfer must be successful within an hour, or else the request with e-Mandate placement expires. e-Mandate authorised with this method typically gets auto-approved within 24 hours.

Request parameters

Name	Position	Required	Description
token	Headers	True	app public key

POST: https://api.creditchek.africa/v1/recova/micro-deposit/bank-list

💡 Supported banks for micro-deposit
FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
UNION BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC
ACCESS BANK PLC
ZENITH INTERNATIONAL BANK PLC
EcoBank Plc
FIDELITY BANK PLC
FIRST CITY MONUMENT BANK PLC
Globus Bank Ltd
JAIZ Bank
KEYSTONE BANK PLC
POLARIS BANK LIMITED
Providus Bank
Stanbic IBTC
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK PLC
STERLING BANK PLC
SUNTRUST BANK
TAJBank Ltd
TITAN TRUST BANK
United Bank for Africa Plc
UNITY BANK PLC
Wema Bank

e-Signature

This involves the debtor/payer electronically appending their signature to match the signature recognized by the debtor’s bank on record (or file). The system allows up to 48 hours for the debtors' bank to approve this e-mandate request for onward processing.

e-Mandates Debit types

One-time

If the debit type is only a one-time transaction, then there would be no need to pass any frequency enum (string: daily | weekly | monthly) or expect an automated payment breakdown/summary.

Recurring

If the debit type is meant to reoccur over a defined period, you have to specify the ‘frequency’, ‘start date’, and ‘end date’, so the system can automatically generate the payment breakdown summary and respective debit due dates accordingly.

Scheduler (Automated debit collection system)

To reduce the burden of managing direct debit arrangements and the engineering resources, we have this infrastructure built to be dependable, safe and secure, which enforces options to suit diverse lending(credit) or post-paid merchants. This ensures that RecovaPRO can be your main direct debit dependable system or a backup to your existing methods for your business. Both fixed and variable category supports collection schedules, whereby the collections are managed by RecovaPRO. A payer's(customer) collection schedule can be specified when the payer is created and can be changed by updating the payer record. RecovaPRO (Direct Debit) collection mode is of two types:

Automated

This option facilitates full charge of all debit (pull) collection directly from your customer’s bank account on the assigned due date automatically with the help of our smart automated debit system engineered to enforce dependable collection from all associated bank accounts (primary and backups) on record in association with the customer’s BVN and ‘active’ e-mandate. The debit(pull) transaction trigger is explicitly dependent on the active status, frequency, start date, end date, and debit due date of the consented e-mandate.

Manual

This option serves as a reliable backup debt recovery tool for diverse merchants where the e-mandate can be created, and approved with active status over a defined agreed period, but only triggered explicitly by the merchant from your digital platform when the need arises to rely on our dependable scheduler(collection system) to initiate the recovery of funds directly from your customers(debtors) bank accounts within the limits of the direct debit arrangement.

This facilitates full control to the merchant on if/when such debit can happen as long as the e-mandate is active, within the arrangement validity period, and the total outstanding amount limit on record.

Direct Debit guarantee

Your customers (payers) are entitled to an immediate refund for any payments that shouldn’t have been taken (dispute such transactions through chargeback fees).

Advance Notification System (coming soon)

To comply with the Direct Debit scheme guidelines as defined by the Central (Apex) Bank, it is important to serve advance notice within 14 days of the debit due date to your customer(debtor) which is automatically transmitted at least 24 hours before the debit transaction is executed. Your customers (payers) must be told the amount and date of each payment in advance. The platform has the following options to be enabled for your RecovaPRO merchant profile:

• Email (Free for all merchants)
• SMS (Charges applies)
• WhatsApp (Charges applies)
• Webhook Notification (Free for all merchants. Can be automated to as part of your workflow to appear in the transaction activity or history or in-app push-notification about the scheduled, successful, and failed debit)

RecovaPRO Automated Notification Preference (coming soon)

To enable the preferred automated email notification system for each mandate-related event required to be sent to the merchant and payer respectively on most transactions(including Advanced Notification before debt collection).

TIP

If the Advance Notification before debt collection is disabled for Payers, Webhook MUST be used as an alternative and as it is required by the Direct Debit Scheme regulated by the central bank to notify any payer within 14 days before any debit is performed on an active e-mandate.

Payouts (onward settlements)

All businesses (merchants) require a dependable method for ensuring the receipt of all recuperated merchant funds to sustain ongoing expansion reliably. Thus, it is easier to provide more credits, recover, “rinse, and repeat” without hassle when onward settlement is reliable and available during operational hours. Our platform allows merchants to request electronic payouts every Monday through Saturday (9 am to 6 pm). It guarantees to get funds in the setup or desired destination bank account (taxes and surcharges excluded) within an SLA(service level agreement) of two hours.

RecovaPRO Webhook event types (coming soon)

For most merchants using the SDK and API integration, we have gone the extra mile to facilitate automating your digital system with RecovaPRO, these asynchronous communications are vital to enforcing desired automated workflows to improve the overall customer experience, and they include the following: These are webhook events that are triggered when RecovaPRO async operations or actions are executed. We have itemized them down below for your reference:

• Mandate created event.
• Mandate expired event.
• Mandate rejected event.
• Mandate approved event.
• Mandate paused event.
• Mandate canceled event.
• Mandate reinstated event.
• Mandate advance notification event.
• Debit successful event.
• Debit failed event.