Registered Mandates: API vs Host-to-Host Integration
Every registered mandate operation — registration, amendment, suspension, cancellation and the collections that follow — is ultimately an ISO 20022 message exchanged between your sponsoring bank and the payer's bank. What you choose is how those messages reach your bank: through a real-time API or through host-to-host (H2H) file exchange.
Banks typically publish both options — for example, Absa offers a Registered Mandate host-to-host file specification alongside its Registered Mandate API. Both carry the same operations; they differ in interaction style, latency and operational model.
What is the API integration model?
With an API integration, your system calls the bank's registered mandate API for each operation and receives responses over the same channel:
- You send a registration, amendment, suspension or cancellation request as an individual API call.
- Validation failures surface immediately, so errors can be fixed while the customer interaction is still live.
- Status updates and outcomes are returned as API responses or asynchronous notifications.
APIs suit event-driven flows: a customer signs up on your website, and you register the mandate as part of the onboarding journey, confirming success before the session ends.
What is the host-to-host integration model?
With host-to-host integration, you exchange batch files with the bank over a secure managed connection:
- You compile mandate instructions and collections into files in the bank's specified format and transmit them on an agreed schedule.
- The bank processes the file and returns response files with the outcome of each instruction.
- Your systems import the response files and update mandate and collection statuses.
H2H suits scheduled, high-volume processing: a monthly billing run that registers, amends and collects against thousands of mandates in one batch.
How do the two models compare?
| Aspect | API | Host-to-host |
|---|---|---|
| Interaction | Per-mandate, real-time requests | Batched files on a schedule |
| Feedback | Immediate validation and responses | Response files after processing |
| Best for | Onboarding journeys, event-driven registration | Bulk billing runs, large books |
| Volume handling | One call per operation; high volumes need throughput planning | Thousands of instructions per file |
| Error handling | Fix and retry in-session | Correct and resubmit in the next file cycle |
| Build effort | REST/JSON style development, authentication, retries, idempotency | File generation, transfer scheduling, response reconciliation |
The general trade-offs between these styles apply across all payment types — see Batch Files vs APIs for the broader discussion.
Which should you choose?
Consider your operating pattern:
- Choose API when mandates are created one at a time as customers sign up, and you want immediate confirmation that the registration succeeded before proceeding.
- Choose host-to-host when you run scheduled bulk cycles against a large existing book and per-mandate latency does not matter.
- Combine both where it fits: many collectors register new mandates via API during onboarding and run monthly collections via files.
Whichever channel you choose, the lifecycle rules are identical — the same statuses (registered, amended, suspended, cancelled, rejected) come back, just packaged as API responses or file records. See The Registered Mandate Lifecycle Explained.
Do you need to build the bank integration yourself?
Not necessarily. Integrating directly with a bank's RM API or H2H specification means handling ISO 20022 message structures, bank onboarding, security requirements and per-bank differences yourself. A payment provider abstracts this away: Kwik offers registered mandate collections through a single integration, handling the bank messaging, response processing and reconciliation on your behalf — the same way it does for DebiCheck, where an equivalent choice exists (see DebiCheck: API vs Host-to-Host).
That lets you work with one modern API regardless of which underlying channel and sponsoring bank carries the messages.
Related topics
Returns and Disputes
Why registered mandate collections are returned unpaid, how the dispute rules differ from ordinary EFT debit orders, and how registration protects you.
Bank Transfers and PayShap
How EFT credits, real-time clearing, PayShap and RTGS payments work, plus payouts, bulk payments, account verification, proof of payment and failed transfers.