What Bancontact is
Bancontact is Belgium's own payment brand. Its story began in 1979 with the Bancontact network, and today it covers payments with Bancontact debit cards, the Bancontact Pay app and Bancontact Pro, its tools for merchants. The company behind it, Bancontact Company, is a payment institution supervised by the National Bank of Belgium.
During 2026 the Payconiq name is being retired: the Payconiq by Bancontact app became Bancontact Pay, and the company dropped Payconiq from its own name. Online, buyers pay with a Bancontact card or app linked to a Belgian bank account, in euros, and merchants accept it through a payment provider that offers it, which is how our checkout module connects to it.
What it does in your platform
Checkout
Lets Belgian buyers pay in euros on every merchant's hosted checkout, with their Bancontact card or the Bancontact Pay app. The payment runs through your payment provider, and the result is known as soon as the buyer has confirmed.
How the connection works
Bancontact reaches the checkout through a payment provider that offers it. The checkout module talks to that provider's API, and the provider connects to Bancontact.
The buyer picks Bancontact
On the merchant's hosted checkout. The module asks your payment provider to start a Bancontact payment, in euros.
Card or app
The buyer is sent to Bancontact, where they enter their card details or scan a QR code with their payment app.
The buyer confirms
They authorise the payment, for example with their PIN in the app. Every payment is authenticated by the buyer.
The result is immediate
The buyer returns to the checkout, and your payment provider knows at once whether the payment succeeded.
The module records it
Your payment provider reports the result to the module, which marks the order paid and shows it in the backoffice.
The money follows
The funds reach the merchant through your payment provider's settlement and are matched in the ledger.
Next to other payment methods
Bancontact sits in the checkout's bank payments, next to iDEAL for the Netherlands, BLIK for Poland and open banking through TrueLayer, Tink or Yapily. Belgian buyers who prefer a credit card or a wallet find those on the same checkout.
The payment provider behind Bancontact can change without touching the checkout. Your merchants integrated once, and a new provider is a configuration change, or a new connector, on the platform side.
When Bancontact fits best
A strong fit when
- Your merchants sell to buyers in Belgium, where Bancontact is the familiar way to pay.
- You want every payment authenticated by the buyer, with the result known while they are still at the checkout.
- Many of your buyers shop on their phones, where the Bancontact Pay app confirms a payment with a PIN.
Also worth a look
- iDEAL or open banking payments, when you also sell to the Netherlands or across Europe.
- Cards and wallets, for buyers outside Belgium.
How we get you live
The payment provider
We help you switch Bancontact on with your payment provider, or choose a provider that offers it if yours does not.
The payment page
We set up Bancontact in the checkout with you: the merchants who offer it and the pages buyers return to after paying.
The keys
Your payment provider's API keys and webhook secret go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else.
A full test run
The whole flow runs in your payment provider's test environment, from the checkout to the backoffice, before your first real payment.
