Payment Methods
ElasticPay supports two payment methods: cards and BECS Direct Debit. Every integration — whatever the channel — resolves to one of these.
At a glance
| Card | BECS Direct Debit | |
|---|---|---|
| Schemes / rails | Visa, Mastercard, Amex (card-not-present) | Australian bank accounts (BSB + account number) |
| Processing | Real-time | Batch |
| Settlement | T+1 | T+3 |
| Save for later use | ✅ Tokenised (pm_xxx) | ✅ Tokenised, with a direct debit mandate |
| Recurring | ✅ | ✅ |
| Refunds | ✅ Full and partial | ✅ Full and partial |
| Customer authentication | 3D Secure where required | Electronic mandate (DDR) acceptance |
| Failure mode | Immediate decline | Dishonour, reported after processing |
| Region | Australia | Australia |
| Channels | Hosted, embedded, direct API | Embedded, direct API |
How methods, channels, and use cases fit together
Choose in this order:
- Use case — what you’re trying to do (one-off payment, save a method, recurring billing, virtual terminal)
- Channel — how you collect payment details (hosted page, embedded widget, direct API)
- Method — what the customer pays with (card or BECS)
The use case determines what information must be captured at the moment of authorisation. Getting this right is what makes saved-method and recurring charges work reliably — see Stored Credentials & Recurring Charges.