Lithuania adopted the euro in 2015 and is fully integrated into the SEPA system, and it is a market with high consumer acceptance of account-debit payments, such as automatic payment of telecom and utility bills. Since the vast majority of the population holds an IBAN account, using SEPA Direct Debit — a European Payments Council (EPC) scheme — to collect recurring charges from Lithuanian customers is a workable structure. This method has an advantage for subscriptions, memberships, and recurring billing rather than one-off sales.

This suits businesses built around monthly recurring charges, such as SaaS/content subscriptions and online courses, especially merchants that want to reduce involuntary churn caused by card expiration or renewal failures. Unlike cards, an account number has no expiration date, which is an advantage for maintaining long-term subscription retention.

Once a consumer submits a mandate (authorization to debit) a single time, the merchant then pulls the payment from the consumer's euro account at each billing cycle. Instead of per-transaction authentication as with cards, scheme rules such as advance notice before debiting must be observed. The withdrawn EUR funds are received by Hecto Financial, converted, and settled to the Korean merchant in whichever currency — USD, KRW, or JPY — was set under the contract.

Integrating through Hecto Financial lets a Korean company explore adopting SEPA Direct Debit-based recurring billing without a local contract in Lithuania. Since this method requires operational design such as mandate collection and storage systems and a retry policy for failed debits (insufficient funds, closed accounts), please confirm the support format and conditions through consultation before signing a contract.

• Merchant registration country

  Confirm whether contracting is possible for merchants registered in Korea

• Sales channels

  Integration method and priority vary depending on your online sales channel mix — owned storefront, marketplaces, mobile apps, etc.

• Product categories

  Check in advance whether your products fall under restricted categories according to the SEPA Direct Debit operator's merchant policy

• EU regulatory compliance

  Confirm compliance with EU payment regulations such as PSD2 and SEPA (see official sources below)

Settlement proceeds in the order of: EUR debit from the Lithuanian consumer's account, receipt and conversion by Hecto Financial, and domestic settlement in whichever currency — USD, KRW, or JPY — was chosen. It is essential to note that SEPA Direct Debit consumers can request a refund within 8 weeks of the debit date for any reason. This is a receivables risk, since funds already settled to you can be clawed back retroactively, so you should avoid treating revenue as final before the 8-week window has passed and monitor for unusual debits. On top of this, the standard EU-wide 14-day right-of-withdrawal refund obligation applies separately.

• Bank of Lithuania (Lietuvos bankas)Official information from the integrated supervisory authority responsible for operating Lithuania's payment systems and licensing and supervising electronic money institutions (EMIs). Where the content of this page differs from actual regulations, the official sources take precedence.