Pay for Claude by bank in the UK: Pay by Bank and Bacs Direct Debit

Unless your organisation has a paid usage contract with Anthropic, you cannot pay Anthropic for Claude by bank transfer or Direct Debit in the UK: claude.ai takes credit or debit cards only, and the Apple Account that bills an iPhone subscription lists no bank option among its UK payment methods. A UK bank account can still pay for the Claude API and for Claude Code run on an API key. Kunavo is an independent gateway that resells Claude by the token against a balance you load in advance; when its Stripe checkout quotes the amount in sterling it offers Pay by Bank (you approve the payment in your banking app) and Bacs Direct Debit (it settles in several business days). The minimum top-up is $10, roughly £7.73–£7.88 at checkout, and the balance never expires. It does not pay for Claude Pro or Max, and it does not add credit to Anthropic's Console. Stripe, Anthropic and Apple pages and Kunavo prices were all checked on October 3, 2026.

Short answer: can you pay for Claude by bank in the UK?

Claude Pro on the web, Claude Pro in the iPhone app, Console credits and a Kunavo balance are four different bills, and only the last one takes a UK bank payment from a self-serve buyer:

• Claude Pro or Max on claude.ai: no. A plan bought in the browser is card-only, per Anthropic's paid-plan billing FAQ (read October 3, 2026), so neither a sort code nor a Direct Debit mandate is accepted there.
• Claude Pro or Max in the iPhone app: no bank option. The App Store bills your Apple Account. Apple's UK list of Apple Account payment methods is Apple Account balance, Apple Pay, mobile phone billing (3Pay, EE, O2, Vodafone), most credit and debit cards, and PayPal (read October 3, 2026). That list is for the whole account; we have not checked what the Claude app's own purchase sheet shows. On Android, Google Play bills you with the methods on your Google account.
• Claude API on Anthropic's Console: card. Anthropic's payment help article says it accepts credit and debit cards for all purchases, takes ACH (a US bank rail) only for some account types, and does not accept PayPal or Venmo. Its API billing article says Console credits are prepaid, expire one year after purchase and cannot be refunded (both read October 3, 2026). The exception is an organisation on a paid usage contract: Anthropic bills its usage monthly through Stripe, and its help article on those bills says a bank transfer has to match the amount due exactly (read October 3, 2026). That is a sales arrangement, not something you can switch on in the Console.
• Claude API and Claude Code through Kunavo: yes. In a pound checkout, Kunavo's Stripe page offers Pay by Bank and Bacs Direct Debit. The balance pays per token for Claude, and Claude Code runs on the same key. That route is the rest of this page.

What a UK buyer sees at Kunavo's checkout

Kunavo sets prices in US dollars. When Stripe places you in the UK it shows the checkout in pounds, and its Adaptive Pricing lists Pay by Bank and Bacs Debit among the methods that need the local currency, which is why neither appears in a dollar checkout. A sterling checkout offers cards, Link, Apple Pay or Google Pay on devices set up for them, Bacs Direct Debit, and Pay by Bank where your bank supports it. Both bank rails are offered at checkout on Kunavo's Stripe account, but neither has carried a Kunavo top-up yet, so the steps below follow Stripe's documentation of each rail.

Sources: Stripe's Pay by Bank and Bacs Direct Debit docs, read October 3, 2026.

Pay by Bank, step by step

Pay by Bank runs on open banking: rather than typing card details, you approve a one-off payment from your account inside your bank's own app or website (Stripe's Pay by Bank docs, read October 3, 2026).

1. Open Billing, pick a top-up and check that Stripe's page shows the amount in pounds.
2. Choose Pay by Bank and pick your bank from the list the checkout shows. If your bank is not listed, use Bacs or a card.
3. You are sent to your bank's app or website. Log in there and approve the payment. Under open banking you never give your login details to anyone but your own bank or building society (Open Banking, read October 3, 2026).
4. You return to Kunavo. Stripe's Checkout guide for Pay by Bank says the merchant is told immediately whether the payment succeeded or failed, so the balance is credited when that confirmation reaches Kunavo. If it has not appeared, refresh Billing before paying again, and if the order shows Processing, wait for it rather than paying a second time.

Limits and edge cases, all from Stripe's docs:

• Amount: £0.50 to £10,000 per payment by default.
• One-off only. Stripe Checkout supports Pay by Bank for single payments, not for saving a payment method, so it cannot drive auto-recharge.
• Approved but failed. Occasionally a payment you approved fails because Stripe did not receive the money from your bank in time. Nothing is credited; if the money arrives afterwards, Stripe returns it to you automatically. Start a new top-up.
• Euro checkouts. Pay by Bank also appears in some euro checkouts. This page covers the pound one.

Bacs Direct Debit, step by step

Bacs Direct Debit pulls the payment from a UK bank account under a mandate you give once at checkout. It is the slower rail: Stripe confirms a payment in about 4 business days when a mandate is already in place and up to 7 when a new one is collected (Stripe's Bacs docs, read October 3, 2026).

1. In a pound checkout, choose Bacs Direct Debit.
2. Enter your sort code, account number, the account holder's name, your email and your full address. Together these make up the mandate.
3. Accept the mandate, which authorises the debit. Stripe's required wording for Bacs mandate forms has the payer confirm that they hold the account and are the only person required to authorise debits from it; Checkout shows its own mandate screen, which we have not seen with a Kunavo top-up. If your business account needs two signatories, that confirmation would not hold, so use another method.
4. Stripe emails you when your Direct Debit details are confirmed and each time your account is debited; Stripe sends these emails by default.
5. Back on Billing, the order shows Processing until Stripe confirms the payment. The balance is then credited automatically. Do not pay a second time.

How long it takes. Stripe's typical timeline for a new mandate, in business days: the mandate is submitted on day 0, becomes active with the payment submitted on day 3, and the money leaves your account on day 5. A payment created after 20:00 London time, or on a weekend or bank holiday, starts the next business day. Each Kunavo checkout may collect a fresh mandate, so plan on up to 7 business days for every Bacs top-up rather than counting on the shorter time.

• Your statement. By default the debit names Stripe as the service user, with a mandate reference, and Bacs cannot carry a per-payment description. The line may say Stripe rather than Kunavo.
• Limit: £10,000 per payment by default.
• Cancelling. You can cancel the mandate at any time with your bank or by writing to Kunavo; a cancelled mandate cannot be used for further debits.
• The Direct Debit Guarantee. Bacs payments are covered by it: the collector must normally give you notice in advance if the amount, date or frequency changes, and if an error is made in a payment, by the collector or your bank, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund from your bank or building society (summarised from the Direct Debit Guarantee, October 3, 2026).

Which one to pick

• Pay by Bank if your bank is in the list and you want the balance today.
• Bacs Direct Debit if your bank is not listed and you can wait up to 7 business days.
• A card in US dollars if you want auto-recharge, which charges only a saved card or Link, or want to avoid Stripe's conversion fee. Your bank may charge its own foreign-exchange fee on a dollar payment.

What it costs in pounds

Stripe's sterling price is not the bare exchange rate: it carries a 2–4% conversion margin, and you, not Kunavo, bear it. Stripe holds the rate for 24 hours, and a refund goes back in pounds at the original rate, so you get back exactly what you paid (Stripe Adaptive Pricing, read October 3, 2026). The table works from £0.7575 to the dollar (derived from the ECB reference rates of October 2, 2026) and adds the margin on top; on the day, the sterling total Stripe shows is what leaves your account.

Even the $5,000 top-up stays under the £10,000 per-payment default on both rails. Claude Sonnet 5 costs $1.40 per 1M input tokens and $7.00 per 1M output tokens on Kunavo; every model's rate is on the pricing page and in Claude API pricing.

If Pay by Bank or Bacs does not appear, or a payment fails

• The checkout is in US dollars. Both rails need the checkout, and Stripe only switches to sterling when it locates you in the UK as the page opens. Turn off any VPN or proxy and reopen the checkout from Billing. If you switched the checkout to dollars yourself, switch it back.
• Pay by Bank is there but your bank is not. Use Bacs, or a card.
• Pay by Bank failed after you approved it. Stripe did not get the money from your bank in time; anything that arrives later goes back to you. Start a new top-up.
• A Bacs debit failed, for example for lack of funds or a cancelled mandate. The order is marked Failed and nothing is credited.
• You need two signatures on the account. Stripe's Bacs mandate wording has you confirm you are the only person required to authorise debits; use another method.

Not offered in a pound checkout: PayPal (not offered at Kunavo at all), SEPA Direct Debit, a manual transfer to account details, Klarna, and Afterpay, which the UK knows as Clearpay (Stripe's Afterpay docs, read October 3, 2026). At Kunavo, Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, Zip, Cash App Pay, ACH bank debit and crypto are US-dollar-checkout methods and do not appear when the checkout is in pounds. Cards and Link are offered in pounds as well as dollars.

Refunds and disputes

Ask support@kunavo.com, which decides each request individually. The typical bank case is paying twice for one top-up, for example approving Pay by Bank after a Bacs order was already Processing. By default the money comes back as balance; ask for it to go back to your bank account and it is refunded through Stripe instead (billing docs). Once Stripe sends one, the rail's own rules apply:

• Pay by Bank: refundable for up to 730 days, in part or in full, to the same bank account. A refund usually arrives by the next business day and can take up to 7 days. There is no chargeback process, because you authenticated the payment in your banking app (Stripe's Pay by Bank and Checkout docs, read October 3, 2026).
• Bacs Direct Debit: refunds must be submitted within 180 days and typically take 3–4 business days. A refund on a payment that is still processing waits until the payment succeeds, and is cancelled if it fails. Separately, you can dispute a Bacs payment through your bank with no time limit, and the bank's decision is final. Stripe warns that a refund and a bank dispute on the same payment can credit you twice, so tell Kunavo if you have already gone to your bank (Stripe, read October 3, 2026).

Under Adaptive Pricing, either refund comes back in pounds at the rate you paid.

VAT

For Claude Pro and Max, Anthropic's own plans, your billing address decides the tax jurisdiction, and an optional VAT ID field appears when the address is eligible; changes apply only to future billing cycles (Anthropic help centre, read October 3, 2026). Kunavo does not issue VAT invoices for any country, the UK included. The Billing page shows every top-up, when it was paid, for how much and whether it is Processing, Paid or Failed.

Top up and make the first call

1. Create a Kunavo account by email or Google sign-in. Signing up asks for no payment details, so there is nothing to attach before you choose the bank route.
2. Open Billing and pick an amount, from $10. Larger tiers carry a bonus: pay $100, get $110; pay $1,000, get $1,200; pay $5,000, get $6,250.
3. On Stripe's page, check that the total is in pounds, then pay with Pay by Bank or Bacs Direct Debit as above.
4. When Billing shows the top-up as paid, open API keys and create one; copy the sk-kn- value straight away, because it is displayed only at creation. Test it with one request:

# After the top-up is credited, this is the first call.
curl https://api.kunavo.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KUNAVO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-5",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "One line: did the bank top-up work?"}]
  }'

For Claude Code, point it at Kunavo with the same key. Set the model explicitly; otherwise it picks its own default, which may not be the model you meant to pay for:

# Claude Code on the same key and the same balance
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.kunavo.com   # the origin, no /v1
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=sk-kn-...
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL=claude-sonnet-5
claude

The full setup is in the Claude Code docs; the API also speaks the OpenAI format at https://api.kunavo.com/v1. A bank top-up is spent token by token at the same rate as any other: nothing is charged for a request that fails, no subscription runs alongside it, and what you have not used stays on the account with no expiry date.

Paying from somewhere else

Outside the UK the bank rails change: the full map of what Kunavo's checkout offers in each country is in paying for the Claude API without a credit card. Pages for single local methods: Pay for Claude with UPI (India), Pagar a API com Pix (Brazil), Pagare Claude con Satispay (Italy), payer Claude sans carte bancaire (France and Belgium) and Claude ohne Kreditkarte bezahlen (Germany and Austria).

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