How does request to pay work?
The merchant, or its provider, sends a structured request with the amount, the reference and a deadline to the customer’s bank or payment service provider, identified for example by phone number or account alias. The customer sees the request in their app, checks the details and accepts, declines or ignores it. Accepting starts a transfer to the merchant with the reference attached, and the merchant receives a status. The European Payments Council’s SEPA Request-to-Pay rulebook, whose first version entered into force in June 2021, standardises these messages across European providers.
Why does it matter?
It brings bank payments closer to a card checkout: no typing of account numbers, the amount and reference are always right, and the customer approves in a familiar app. As an illustrative example: a store that offers manual bank transfers finds that 4% of them arrive with a wrong amount or no reference and need manual matching. Switching to requests with prefilled details removes most of that work, because each payment comes back with the order’s reference.
What are the limits?
Coverage depends on banks connecting to a request-to-pay service, which varies by country. The customer can ignore a request, so it needs an expiry and a fallback. And refunds and disputes follow the rules of the underlying transfer, which often has no card-style chargeback.
Where does Omno use it?
Omno connects bank transfer, instant payment and other local methods through its PSPs and shows them in the hosted checkout according to eligibility rules by country, method, customer group and customer verification level, with final statuses delivered by webhook. Which request-style flows are available depends on the method and provider in each market.