Merchants
Swan account holders who are approved to accept payments from their customers using Swan.
Overview​
Merchants are users who want to accept payments by card, SEPA Direct Debit, Internal Direct Debit, or French checks, either directly from a payment link or an invoice. This includes contractors, healthcare professionals, artisans, and business owners, among others.
With a merchant profile and at least one active merchant payment method, you can help your merchants accept payments with Swan.
Before accepting payments, you need to complete a risk review. To get started, contact your dedicated Technical Account Manager, or send an email to integration@swan.io.
Managing risk​
Accepting payments from customers comes with risk, and Swan prioritizes a risk-based approach.
That's why Swan reviews all requests for merchant profiles, profile updates, and payment methods. You might be contacted for more information before Swan accepts or rejects the request.
To manage potential risk, if suspicious activity is detected, Swan can change the status of both profiles and payment methods to Suspended or Rejected.
Swan can also reinstate a profile or payment method by changing the status to Enabled.
Finally, if Swan assigns the status Rejected to a profile or payment method, the decision is final and can't be reversed.
The user must create a new request, which Swan will review as a separate submission.
Webhooks​
Subscribe to numerous webhooks to facilitate your merchant integrations. Review the full list of merchant webhooks, or subscribe to them directly from your Dashboard > Developers > Webhooks.
Profile & payment method statuses​
| Profile status | Explanation |
|---|---|
PendingReview | Profile or payment method request or update was submitted and is pending a review by Swan. Next steps:
|
Enabled | Profile or payment method is active.
|
Suspended | Status assigned by Swan when the merchant's use of their profile or payment method needs to be reviewed. The status can't return to Enabled without a review. |
Rejected | Final status assigned by Swan when Swan decides the risk of this profile or the risk of this payment method for the associated merchant is too high, or for some other risk-related reason. |
Disabled | Final status set by you using the requestMerchantPaymentMethods mutation. |
Merchant profiles​
A merchant profile is a collection of business, risk, and support information that fulfills two primary requirements:
- Approve the account holder as a merchant.
- Facilitate accepting payments with Swan.
If a Swan account holder wants to accept payments from customers, they must have at least one merchant profile.
Your users can create merchant profiles during onboarding, but only if you've requested the feature for them. Since merchants are considered high risk, merchant profiles should only be requested for users who qualify and will accept payments. Requesting merchant profiles for users that don't qualify may create false expectations about available features.
A merchant profile contains the following information:
- Business details
- Description of the business activity
- Link to the merchant's website or social network
- Projected volumes
- Payment frequency
- Logo (optional), in
.pngformat and less than 1 MB. It's shown online and on the PDF of the payment mandate. - Accent color
- Customer region
To speed up merchant profile enablement, complete as many input fields as possible.
Providing your customerRegion, paymentFrequency, and at least a socialNetwork or merchantWebsite can reduce turnaround time.
The merchant profile is created with the status PendingReview, and is visible right away on your Dashboard.
Updating merchant profiles​
You can request a merchant profile update with the API mutation requestMerchantProfileUpdate.
If you use Swan's Web Banking interface, merchants can request an update through their app.
Request an update for the merchant's name, website, product type, expected monthly payment volume, expected average basket, and logo.
Updating a merchant profile produces the following events:
- The merchant profile status doesn't change, remaining
Enabled. The merchant continues to use their merchant profile with the existing information. - The update status is
PendingReview. Swan reviews the new information to ensure it meets requirements. - After Swan reviews and validates the update request, the update status changes to
Enabledand the update is published to the merchant profile. - If Swan rejects the update request, the merchant profile remains
Enabledby default, unless Swan decides otherwise. The merchant profile status doesn't change.
When a merchant payment method is requested, Swan may ask for additional information even if the merchant profile is already Enabled.
Swan will contact you or your user directly, based on your communication preferences.
If you requested an update and your update status is PendingReview, but you need to make another change, submit a new update request.
Swan reviews both requests, but only the most recent is made public.
All update requests are reviewed by Swan according to the same risk guidelines as a new merchant profile.
Payment methods​
Your merchants can accept payments from their customers using any of several merchant payment methods.
Merchant payment methods are connected to a merchant profile, and a single merchant profile can have multiple payment methods.
To accept payments with Swan, there must be an Enabled merchant profile and at least one Enabled merchant payment method.
To learn how to request payment methods, refer to the request payment method guides for card payments, SEPA Direct Debit, Internal Direct Debit, and French checks. You can request multiple methods in one API call.
Available payment methods​
Your merchants can request the following online payment methods to accept payments with Swan:
- Cards
- SEPA Direct Debit (B2B and Core)
- Internal Direct Debit (B2B and Standard)
- French checks (API only; debtor's bank must be located in France)
Rolling reserve​
Rolling reserve is a policy Swan applies to merchant transactions to protect the merchant and Swan against various risk factors, primarily insufficient funds and attempted fraud. The reserved amount acts as a safety net to cover potential loss for both Swan and the merchant.
Rolling reserve is expressed as a percentage over a period of time (example: 10% of the payment amount over 30 business days), and applies to most payment methods used by merchants to accept payments with Swan.
For the indicated period of time, the amount isn't part of the merchant's available account balance, after which the funds are released to the merchant and can be used.
| Payment method | Rolling reserve | Default amount |
|---|---|---|
| Cards | ✓ Yes | 100% over 5 business days |
| SEPA Direct Debit - Core | ✓ Yes | Determined by a merchant profile risk assessment |
| SEPA Direct Debit - B2B | ✓ Yes | 100% over 3 business days |
| Internal Direct Debit - Standard | ✓ Yes | Determined by a merchant profile risk assessment |
| Internal Direct Debit - B2B | ✗ No | n/a |
| French checks | ✓ Yes | 100% over 10 interbank business days |
The TransactionRollingReserve.Updated and TransactionRollingReserve.Released webhooks notify you when a rolling reserve is updated or released.
Subscribe to both webhooks to stay updated on your transactions' rolling reserve.
Versions​
Swan creates a new version of your payment method every time an update is approved.
Only one version of a payment method can have the status Enabled.
Swan manages the statuses for Enabled or PendingReview payment methods automatically.
Therefore, you don't need to change the status before calling the API.
Guides​
- Merchant profiles:
- Request payment methods:
- Create payment links: