Can a business debtor refund a B2B collection?

No — that is the point of B2B: collections are final, giving the creditor certainty. In exchange, the debtor’s bank must verify the mandate before honouring the first collection.

Do all banks support SEPA Direct Debit?

Core reachability is near-universal among banks that offer direct debit, but B2B is optional and notably absent at many fintechs. Reachability is per bank and per scheme — check both flags.

What data do I need to start collecting?

A creditor identifier, a signed mandate with a unique reference, and the debtor’s IBAN. The BIC and scheme reachability of the debtor bank can be resolved from the IBAN via the API.

Guide · 5 min read

SEPA Direct Debit: Core vs B2B, mandates and reachability

Last updated 17 July 2026

SEPA Direct Debit lets a creditor pull euros from a debtor’s account under a signed mandate. It powers subscriptions, utilities and B2B invoicing across the SEPA zone — through two schemes with very different guarantees.

Core vs B2B at a glance

	SDD Core	SDD B2B
Debtor	Consumers (and businesses)	Businesses only
Refund right	8 weeks no-questions-asked; 13 months if unauthorised	None once collected
Mandate check	Creditor stores the mandate	Debtor bank must verify the mandate before first collection
Bank participation	Mandatory for banks offering SDD	Optional — many banks don’t support it

The mandate and the collection cycle

The creditor obtains a mandate (paper or electronic), assigns it a unique reference, and submits collections carrying that reference plus the creditor identifier. Pre-notification tells the debtor when and how much will be pulled; the debtor bank debits the account on the due date.

Failures happen for mundane reasons — insufficient funds, closed accounts — but the most preventable one is structural: collecting against a bank that does not participate in the scheme at all.

Why B2B reachability is the trap

SDD B2B participation is optional for banks, and a meaningful share of institutions — especially neobanks and e-money issuers — never opted in. If your billing flow assumes B2B debits and a customer signs up with an unreachable bank, the mandate is worthless: every collection will bounce.

Checking the b2b flag returned by iban2bic at onboarding, when the customer first types their IBAN, turns that failure into a UX branch: offer Core, a credit transfer, or a different account — before the first invoice is due.