Sofortbanking Payments

Sofortbanking is an e-commerce payment system that allows payers to purchase using direct online transfers from their bank account. Payers are redirected to the Sofortbanking website where they can initiate an instant bank transfer.

Sofortbanking is a supported browser payment method in the American Express Payment Gateway. This page describes integration details specific to Sofortbanking. It's recommended that you read the integration guidelines for browser payments, before building a Sofortbanking integration.

Sofortbanking browser payments are only supported for transactions in the EUR currency.

Prerequisites

To offer Sofortbanking as a payment method via the American Express Payment Gateway:

You must be registered with your browser payments service provider.
Your merchant profile on the gateway must be configured using the details of your account with the browser payments service provider.
You must have a bank account in one of the supported currencies registered against your merchant account at your browser payments service provider.

Sofortbanking Integration

Sofortbanking via Hosted Checkout

With Hosted Checkout integrations version 50 and later, Sofortbanking is automatically available to your payers when you are enabled and configured for it by your payment service provider.

For details, see Browser Payments via Hosted Checkout Integration.

Sofortbanking via Web-Services API

Web-Services API integration allows you to offer Sofortbanking payment method on your own checkout page.

Sofortbanking is supported from Web-Services API version 45 onwards.

In addition to the standard fields required in a browser payment request, you need to provide the following fields in the Initiate Browser Payment request for the processing of Sofortbanking payments.

sourceOfFunds.type = SOFORT
browserPayment.operation = PAY (the Authorize operation is not supported by Sofortbanking).
sourceOfFunds.provided.sofort.bic: The international Business Identifier Code (BIC) for the payer's bank account. For an enhanced payer experience it is recommended that you supply this field. In doing so, the payer will not be presented with the bank selection form and will instead be redirected to their bank automatically.

Preferred Language

You can set the language that you prefer Sofortbanking to use for pages displayed to the payer by providing the browserPayment.preferredLanguage field in the Initiate Browser Payment request. However, the language will be used only if Sofortbanking supports it.

Sample Code to Initiate Sofortbanking Payment

{
    "apiOperation":"INITIATE_BROWSER_PAYMENT",
    "browserPayment":{
      "operation":"PAY",
    "returnUrl":"https://<return_url>"
},
    "order":{
        "amount":"10.00",
        "currency":"EUR"
        },
        "sourceOfFunds":{"type":"SOFORT"
        }
}

How to Interpret the Transaction Result

The table below shows the transaction response codes for the possible scenarios you may encounter after initiating a Sofortbanking payment.

Initiate Browser Payment Response	What This Means...
`response.gatewayCode=SUBMITTED` `result=SUCCESS`	Redirect the payer using the URL provided in the response.
Retrieve Transaction/Retrieve Order Response	What This Means...
`response.gatewayCode=APPROVED` `result=SUCCESS` `sourceOfFunds.provided.sofort.bic` `sourceOfFunds.provided.sofort.bankAccountNumber` `sourceOfFunds.provided.sofort.iban`	The payment is successful.
`response.gatewayCode=PENDING` `result=PENDING`	The American Express Payment Gateway is waiting for a notification from the acquirer about the payment result. Try `RETRIEVE_TRANSACTION` again later or listen to notifications from the American Express Payment Gateway.
`response.gatewayCode=CANCELLED` `result=FAILURE`	The payer has cancelled the interaction for this payment. Offer the payer the option to try another payment method.
`response.gatewayCode=DECLINED or ACQUIRER_SYSTEM_ERROR` `result=FAILURE`	The payment was declined. Offer the payer the option to try another payment method. In the case of an `ACQUIRER_SYSTEM_ERROR` you may want to inquire with the acquirer the reason for payment failure, or you can try `RETRIEVE_TRANSACTION` again.
`response.gatewayCode=TIMED_OUT` `result=FAILURE`	Treat this as a declined payment. The American Express Payment Gateway will make an attempt to ensure the transaction is not successful or will revert the transaction.

Refunds

You can refund Sofortbanking payments in part or in full. You must be configured for refunds on the gateway and on your merchant account at your browser payments service provider.

Testing Your Integration

The American Express Payment Gateway provides a browser payments emulator that allows you to test your Sofortbanking integration.