The WPdirectdebit Settings

To access the WPdirectdebit settings page, login to your dashboard using an account with Administrator privileges. New for version 4, the settings are now located under the WPdirectdebit tab in the dashboard menu.

The GoCardless Connection panel show your connection status and contains the buttons used to connect your site to GoCardless either in live mode, or in sandbox mode for testing. It’s possible to connect in both modes and switch between them as needed. Switching between modes does not disconnect a mode.

Beneath the GoCardless Connection panel are four settings groups, each acccesible via an arrow on the right. After making a change, remember to update using the Save settings button.

Connection Settings

Select the access mode – either live or sandbox. Enter the live and sandbox webhook secrets here which can be obtained from your GoCardless accounts (live and sandbox) in the Developers section. To obtain a webhook secret you’ll copy the webhook endpoint shown in this settings group and paste it into the webhook settings of your GoCardless accounts. It’s the same webhook endpoint for both live and sandbox modes.

Always develop and test in sandbox mode until you are sure you are ready to start setting up real payments and subscriptions.

GoCardless Settings

This group of settings all relate to your GoCardless account.

Default country

When you design a form used to set up a mandate, one of the fields you are likely to include will be the customer’s address. If your form does not return the customer’s country, the default country entered here will be passed to GoCardless.

Mandate verification level

With GoCardless, you can now check whether a new customer’s bank account details are genuine without compromising the customer experience. The verification level gives you control over when and how this is implemented.

  • Recommended: Bank account verification will be used if 1) it’s part of scheme rules and 2) if GoCardless Protect+ is also enabled, it will decide using our payment intelligence solution when a bank account should be verified. This means GoCardless Protect+ will only put riskier payers through the Verified Mandate flow. If GoCardless Protect+ is not enabled, “recommended” will behave the same as the “minimum” option.
  • Minimum: Bank account verification will be used only if absolutely required, such as when part of scheme rules.
  • When available: Bank account verification will be used if it’s available for the scheme. If not available, the mandate will be set up without verifying the bank account.
  • Always: Bank account verification will be used if it’s available for the scheme. If not available, the mandate will not be set up and an error will be flagged. It’s recommended you avoid this situation by using ‘When available’.

Purpose code

The purpose code is optional for all schemes other than PayTo (for instant payments in Australia). If you are using PayTo, you should select the most appropriate code from the list.

Intelligent retries (Success+)

When you enable Success+ (also known as intelligent retries), GoCardless will retry failed payments automatically, on the date that is most likely to result in success. You need to have Success+ enabled in your GoCardless account for this to have any effect. More information from GoCardless can be found here.

Transaction minimum

Enter the minimum amount per transaction that you wish to permit. Typically this would be 1 (but for Danish Krone is more likely to be 10). This would indicate £1 or $1, i.e. a whole currency unit, not pence or cents. It must not be zero or negative. We recommend you don’t simply set this value to 1; set it to the lowest transaction value you are ever likely to offer. If you sell items and the cheapest is £25 (allowing for discounts, sales etc.,) then set it to £25. This will discourage anyone trying out stolen bank credentials by making low-value test purchases in your store.

Transaction limit

Enter the maximum amount per transaction that you wish to allow. This should not be higher than the maximum allowed by your GoCardless account. Typically the upper limit is 5000 whole currency units, e.g. £5,000 or €5,000. Do not set this to a higher limit than will ever be a genuine purchase; this will reduce the possibility of errors.

Plugin metadata

This is new to V4. Enable this to store a wpdirectdebit metadata key on GoCardless resources created by the plugin, using one of the three metadata pair slots. If you don’t have an alternative use for all three slots you should enable this so as to benefit from enhanced functionality on the resource pages.

Payment references

These references appear on your customers’ bank statements alongside each payment. Leave blank to use the GoCardless default.

For BACS payments (i.e. receiving payments in the UK) you must be on the GoCardless Plus, Pro or Enterprise packages to use payment references. More information from GoCardless can be found here.

The character limit varies from scheme to scheme; for the BACS scheme the limit is 10 characters. If the reference you enter here is too long for the scheme, it will be truncated.

It’s important that you do not enter anything here if you cannot use payment references.

Diagnostics

Debug mode

Enabling debug mode does two things: (1) It adds more detail to the entry notes on Gravity Forms entries, which can be useful in tracking down a problem, and (2) it enables debugging in Gravity Forms for WPdirectdebit, again to assist with problem-solving. Do not leave the site in Debug mode longer than you need to as sensitive information may be contained in logs.