Notifications and communications

Status: Proposed messaging matrix. Legal notice periods, templates and channels must be validated.

Event-driven messaging

Event	Consumer	Merchant	Priority
Account invitation	Secure link, expiry and identity context	Link status	Normal
Mandate activated	Scope, methods and how to revoke	Activation status	High
Bill accepted	Upcoming amount, due date and planned collection date	Accepted acknowledgement	Normal
Pre-collection reminder	Amount, merchant and payment method	Optional	Normal
Collection initiated	Processing state where appropriate	Processing webhook	Normal
Collection settled	Receipt/status and merchant reference	Success webhook	High
Eligible decline	Action request, safe update link	Failure/recovery state	High
All attempts exhausted	Failed collection and next steps	Failure and reason category	High
Mandate revoked	Confirmation and in-flight caveat	Revocation event	High
Payout completed	Usually no separate consumer message	Payout and allocation statement	High
Refund/dispute	Status and support route	Exception and finance updates	High
Security-sensitive change	Account alert	Relevant admin alert	Critical

Delivery design

Use a transactional outbox: business state and message intent are committed together. Workers send messages asynchronously with provider deduplication and bounded retries. Persist template version, recipient, event ID, channel, delivery state, provider message ID and failure reason.

A notification is not a financial event. Email delivered or opened must not be interpreted as consumer authorisation, collection success or merchant receipt of funds.

Consumer preferences

Allow preference management for optional reminders and marketing separately. Mandatory operational, legal and security messages may need to be delivered despite optional marketing opt-outs, subject to applicable law. Respect accessible content, quiet hours where practical and time zones.

Privacy and anti-phishing

Never include full card numbers, account numbers, access tokens or sensitive personal data. Links should point to authenticated app routes, not contain permanent credentials. Clearly identify the merchant and Sparelane. Do not request payment details by email or SMS reply.

Operations

Provide template preview, approval/version history, bounce handling, provider outages, dead-letter queues, replay tooling and alerting for critical delivery failures. Define support ownership for incorrect bill amounts versus technical payment issues.