What it is
The Referral Partner API enables SaaS platforms to offer professional debt collection as a seamless feature within their own products. Your platform sends invoices to Debitura and tracks collection progress, and your customers complete any onboarding steps on Debitura pages that show your logo and colour.
You can integrate in one of two ways. Both use the same clients, collection cases and referral earnings rules:
Starter Integration - Your platform sends one collection request per invoice and opens the one link Debitura returns. Debitura handles sign-up, onboarding, connection approval, agreements, identity checks and invoice corrections
Full Integration - Your platform builds client onboarding, case submission and status tracking into its own screens
The Full Integration uses three components working together:
Referral Partner API - Your primary interface for managing client relationships, generating access tokens, and viewing revenue reports
Customer API - Used with bearer tokens to submit and manage cases on behalf of your clients
Referral Onboarding - A white-label web flow where your clients sign the Standard Debt Collection Agreement (SDCA)
Why it matters
For referral partners, the API integration unlocks several business advantages:
Embedded experience - Offer debt collection without building your own partner network or compliance infrastructure
Recurring revenue - Earn a share of Debitura's collection fees on successful recoveries from eligible cases. See Referral program overview for details
White-label branding - Your clients see your logo and primary color throughout the onboarding flow. See White-label customization for options
Automated workflows - Eliminate manual handoffs by connecting your invoicing or AR systems directly to Debitura
How it works
The flow runs from client onboarding through case management and financial reconciliation. With the Starter Integration, Debitura runs the onboarding steps for you; with the Full Integration, your platform runs them through the API.
Starter Integration: one request per invoice
With the Starter Integration, your platform puts a collection button beside an unpaid invoice. When your user clicks it, your server sends one collection request to Debitura. One collection request contains one invoice.
Debitura then finds or creates the client and handles what has to happen before the invoice can become a case:
Sign-up and onboarding for a new client
Approval of the connection when the client already has a Debitura account. Debitura emails one approval invitation to the user you submitted with the request
Signing the required agreements
Identity details (KYC, know your customer) when the collection partner requires them
Correcting invoice details that are readable but need fixing
The request returns one link for your customer's next step, and your button opens that link whenever your customer needs to act. You follow progress by reading the request or through the collection request update webhook (collection_request.updated). A request that has become a case does not mean collection has started yet: agreements, identity checks and case verification can still be outstanding.
For a non-technical walkthrough of what you build and what your users see, read Referral Partners: Starter Integration - how the collection button works.
Full Integration: client onboarding and linking
With the Full Integration, when one of your customers wants to use debt collection, you create or link them as a client in Debitura. The API handles three scenarios:
New client, ready immediately - If the client has already signed the SDCA (perhaps through a prior interaction), they can submit cases right away
New client, onboarding required - Most common scenario. You redirect the client to a white-label onboarding flow where they confirm company details and sign the SDCA electronically
Existing client - If the client already has a Debitura account, the API creates a link request. The client must approve connecting their account to your platform
There is one exception to the third scenario. If the client is one you previously withdrew, re-submitting them with the same external tenant ID re-links the original account and creates your cases straight away: no link request is created and the client is not asked to approve anything. See Referral Partners: 409 conflict path for the conditions that have to hold.
Full Integration: case creation
Once a client is onboarded, you can submit cases on their behalf. Two approaches are available:
Bearer token method - Generate a short-lived access token (valid for 30 minutes) and call the Customer API to create individual cases
Multi-case creation - Submit multiple cases in a single API call during client creation, useful for bulk onboarding scenarios
Each case includes debtor information, invoice details, and supporting documentation. The API validates inputs and routes cases to appropriate collection partners based on the debtor's jurisdiction.
Status tracking
Track case progress through the collection lifecycle. You have two options:
Webhooks (recommended) - Receive real-time notifications when significant events occur: client onboarding complete, case created, case status changed, and more. See Webhook events for the business meaning of each event type
Polling - Query the API periodically to check current status
Webhook events include client onboarding milestones (PoA signed, contract signed), link request lifecycle (request sent, approved, declined, expired), case creation, case lifecycle updates, and case closure. The link request events belong to the Full Integration; with the Starter Integration, the collection request update event reports approval and the other steps of each request.
Financial reconciliation
The Revenue Reporting endpoint (GET /reporting/transactions) provides transaction-level detail of your earnings and, in the same response, totals by stage. You can filter by date range, stage, status, debtor country and collection partner. The API reports seven detailed stages, including Disputed (a manual hold while an amount or attribution is checked); they fall into four groups:
Unrecognized - The collection partner's commission on the payment is not yet settled; the amount is an estimate
Recognized Uninvoiced - The collection partner's commission is settled and the amount is locked. By default, the fee is ready to include in your monthly invoice to Debitura once Debitura has received its platform fee from the collection partner; if your partnership agreement includes an early-invoicing exception, it is ready as soon as the commission is settled
Recognized Invoiced - Debitura has issued you a self-billing statement or recorded your invoice; payment is outstanding
Recognized Paid - Debitura has recorded sending your referral payment. This is Debitura's payment record, not confirmation that the money has reached your bank account
For details on the invoicing process and payment terms, see Revenue sharing and financial reconciliation.
Integration scope
A typical integration covers these capabilities. The Starter Integration is built around collection requests; the Full Integration uses client management, access tokens and case submission:
Capability | What it enables |
Collection requests (Starter) | Send one invoice per request, open the one link for your customer's next step, and follow the request until it becomes a case |
Client management | Create accounts, link existing clients, check onboarding status |
Access token generation | Obtain short-lived tokens to act on behalf of clients |
Case submission | Create collection cases with debtor and invoice details |
Status tracking | Monitor case progress via webhooks or polling |
Revenue reporting | Query earnings, filter by date and currency, track payment stages |
Partner information | Retrieve your account details and white-label styling configuration |
Environments
Debitura provides separate test and production environments. Your development team should build and test against the test environment before going live. Contact the partnerships team to obtain test credentials.
Attribution and fees
How you earn fees depends on how clients are linked:
Attributed clients - Clients you brought to Debitura. All eligible cases from these clients generate referral fees, regardless of how the cases are created. Each case earns at the rate stored on it under your rate plan, and you earn no referral share on payments received while your own firm is the collection partner on the case
Non-attributed clients - Clients who already existed in Debitura before linking to your platform. Only eligible cases submitted through your integration (Starter or Full) generate fees
On a re-link after withdrawal, attribution carries over from the withdrawn link, but your referral fee percentage is taken from your current rate rather than the rate stored on the old link.
See Lead tracking and quotes for more on how Debitura tracks attribution.
Next steps
New partners: Start with Getting started with Debitura
Need credentials: See Request credentials, environments, and support access
Developers ready to build: See Developer Docs: Referral Partners, which compares the Starter and Full Integration and links to a quickstart for each
Developer Docs: Developers: Want to implement this integration? See Developer Docs: Referral Partners for technical guides and Developer Docs: Referral Partner API Reference for endpoint specifications.