Schedulers and holidays

The scheduler and holidays settings control when incoming and outgoing payments are processed. Schedulers have two jobs, sending transactions for AML processing to the AML callout and creating or processing payments messages, for example, from an incoming SEPA Direct Debit collection request. Schedulers can be configured to only work during set hours, process payments at set intervals, and put payments in a paused state on days defined as holidays or non-working days.

Schedulers

Schedulers can be configured from the Configuration > Schedulers tab, which will be available to users with an administrator role.

Schedulers run at regular intervals between the configured start and end times to process transactions. For each supported payment method, for example SEPA Credit Transfers or SEPA Direct Debit, you will need to configure two schedulers, one for incoming transactions and one for outgoing transactions.

SEPA Instant Payments do not require a scheduler to be configured, these will be processed on a minute by minute basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If using an anti-money laundering (AML) service, the scheduler will first request an AML check and only process the payment after the response indicates that the payment has passed all the checks. For incoming payments, processing will be immediate. For outgoing payments, the payment message will be generated once the response indicating AML checks have passed has been received and processed on the next run of the scheduler. You can additionally request to enable a dedicated scheduler for AML checks, for example, if you would like to send requests to your AML service on a specific schedule or need to spread requests out due to rate limiting.

Incoming or outgoing payments that have a requested settlement date, for example SEPA Direct Debit collections that may be submitted with a requested collection date (ReqdColltnDt) in the future, are first processed by the scheduler to create the necessary payments messages, then again on the requested date to process the transactions themselves.

When a transaction is processed by a scheduler, the necessary withdrawal or deposit Mambu transactions are typically posted against the account using an API call with a value date (valueDate field) set to now. Processed payments sent to a scheduler will be queued and transformed into a payment message the next time it is run. This means that, for example, if a scheduler is set to run between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM and a transaction is processed at 7:00 PM, it will be bulked into a payment file and sent through the configured callout at 9:00 AM the next day when the scheduler restarts. If the payment was an incoming payment with a settlement date on the previous day, the value date of the transaction posted to Mambu will be backdated to that day, however, the booking date will remain with a value of now.

Scheduler start and end times

When configuring your scheduler, you may use the From Time and the To Time fields to set a start and end time. For example, you may configure your schedulers to run during business hours, or have them running from 00:00 to 23:59. It is not possible to configure different times for different days of the week or have custom start and end times for defined holidays. Schedulers of the same type cannot overlap. For example, you cannot create an Incoming SEPA Scheduler to run between 00:00 and 12:00, and another Incoming SEPA Scheduler to run between 11:00 and 23:59.

Cadence

You can set your schedulers to run at defined intervals starting from once a minute.

Bank BIC

In the Bank BIC field you should enter the Bank Identifier Code (BIC) for the bank or branch for which this scheduler should apply to. Generally, you should have incoming and outgoing schedulers configured for each BIC and each payment type you support.

Starting and stopping schedulers

The Start/Stop column will show the current status of a given scheduler. A scheduler can have one of three states: sleeping, active, or stopped.

If a scheduler is not currently processing transactions, the status Sleeping will be shown. You can manually stop a scheduler by selecting the Stop icon on its row. In a stopped state, you can edit the scheduler by selecting Update in the Actions column. When updating a scheduler, you may either change its start or end time or increase or decrease the frequency at which it runs. Selecting the Start icon will restart the scheduler. Any payments due to be processed by a paused scheduler will be held in a queue indefinitely and processed when the scheduler is restarted.

Holidays

Holidays can be defined from the Configuration > Holidays screen and be given a date, group, and description.

Incoming or outgoing payments with a requested settlement date falling on a defined holiday will only be processed by a scheduler after the holiday has ended. Schedulers do not work on holidays.

For example, if you have defined December 25 and December 26 as holidays and a payment is received with a requested settlement date of December 25, it will be processed at the earliest on December 27, with this date also being used for the interbank settlement date (IntrBkSttlmDt) field in the confirmation message passed back to the originator bank.

Saturday and Sunday are always considered non-working days and, except for SEPA Instant Credit Transfers, payment messages will not be sent on these days by default.

Holidays date

Holidays can only be defined for a given day and can not be set to recur on the same day each year. For example, if you configure holidays for Christmas you will need to set them for each year, which, in many countries may be on different days as they could fall on a weekend and so, the resulting bank holiday will be moved to the 27th and 28th of December rather than the 25th and 26th.

Holidays group

The Holidays group field indicates where the holiday applies. The options are Local, EBA (Euro Banking Association), or TARGET 2.

If you select Local, then the holiday applies to your institution, for example a national holiday in the country in which you operate or a non-working day for your institution only.

If the holidays applies for other areas then you may select TARGET 2 or EBA.

You can filter the view of currently defined holidays for a group by providing a holiday group and set of dates in the filter fields above the Holidays table.

Description

The description field can be used for supplying the name of the holiday, for example, Independence Day or Annual General Meeting (AGM).

Impact on processing times

The settlement and booking dates of incoming and outgoing transactions may be impacted by scheduler start and end times, holidays defined in the Mambu Payment Gateway, as well as any holidays or non-working days configured for your Mambu Core Banking System. Depending on your CSM and the payment scheme of a given transaction, there may also be special rules that have to be taken into account during processing.

The behaviour of a rejection or return after settlement will be the same as for any other incoming or outgoing transaction, with the addition of the original interbank settlement being included in the payment instruction in the TxInf.OrgnlTxRef.IntrBkSttlmDt field.

For rejections before settlement, there is no withdrawal or deposit being made against the client's Mambu account, so the only dates which may be affected by any defined holidays are the creation and interbank settlement dates in the Mambu Payment Gateway.

To illustrate how holidays and non-working days defined in the Mambu Core Banking System and Mambu Payment Gateway may affect the interbank settlement date, creation date, value date, and booking date, we will provide examples for SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Direct Debit (Core), and SEPA Direct Debit (B2B) payments.

In the following examples in this article we will be using a few specific terms which we define as:

• Requested Execution/Collection Date - for a SEPA Direct Debit payment, this will be the value of the ReqdColltnDt field. This date is when the payment will be debited from the debtor account and credited to the creditor account. If it falls during a non-banking business day (weekend or configured holiday), it will be automatically updated to the nearest future banking business day.
• Interbank Settlement Date - for a SEPA payment, this will be the value of the IntrBkSttlmDt field. This represents the date on which the funds were made available to the creditor. For SEPA Direct Debit payments this is the Requested Execution or Collection Date if it falls during a banking business day, or the nearest future banking business day if not.
• Creation Date - for SEPA payments this is the value of the CreDtTm field and represents when a collection or transfer request was created, for SEPA Direct Debit collections the creation date can be up to 14 days before the requested execution date. In Mambu, the creation date is the value of the creationDate date, which is automatically generated and represents the time and date on which a deposit, transfer, or withdrawal transaction was made using the API.
• Value Date - in Mambu this is the date on which funds will be made available to or removed from a client's account. When deposits, withdrawals, or transfers are made by Mambu Payment Gateway, the current timestamp at the time of the API request will be used for this field. This same timestamp will also be used to populate the IntrBkSttlmDt when sending confirmation of an incoming SEPA payment, a successful Direct Debit collection, or an outgoing SEPA transfer.
• Booking Date - in Mambu this is the date on which a transaction will be posted to the accounting ledger, the booking date can differ from the value date if, for example, it was posted on a day marked as a holiday or non-working day, in which case, it will be post-dated to the next working day.

For more information on booking and value date in Mambu, see Booking Date vs Value Date.

Dates used in the examples include:

• Friday 5th - Monday 8th August to show behaviour on Saturday and Sunday which are defined as non-working days in Mambu Core Banking and Mambu Payment Gateway
• Tuesday 8th March to show a day configured as a holiday in Mambu only
• Wednesday 4th May to show a day configured as a holiday in Mambu Payment Gateway only
• Thursday 5th June to show a holiday configured in both Mambu Payment Gateway and Mambu Core Banking

SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

For SEPA Instant Credit Transfers the holiday settings do not apply, additionally, you can not configure custom times for the scheduler, this will run every minute. For Instant Credit Transfers, the only date which can differ from the execution date is the Mambu Booking Date, which will be moved to the next working day, as configured in Mambu, but only has an impact on accounting and not when the value of a transfer will be reflected in a client's account.

SEPA Credit Transfer

SEPA Credit Transfers must be submitted on the day of execution, the requested execution date can not be in the future or in the past. Timelines for settlements, recalls and other post-transaction operations are generally specified in banking business days so non-working days and holidays should not be considered when working out the last day a recall or rejection can be made.

SEPA Direct Debit (Core)

SEPA Direct Debit payments can involve both a collection request and a payment message. Timelines for settlement and returns are specified by the scheme in banking business days so non-working days and holidays should not be considered when working out the last day a return can be made. Timelines for refunds are specified by the scheme in calendar days so holidays and non-working days still count when working out the last date a request for refund can be made by a party to the transaction.

SEPA Direct Debit (B2B)

SEPA Direct Debit B2B payments can involve both a collection request and a payment message. The timelines for rejections and returns are specified by the scheme in banking business days so non-working days and holidays should not be considered when working out the last day a recall or rejection can be made. The scheme does not provide for refunds.