Transfer of Ownership of Payment Account from Buyer

For more transparency and easier management of payment methods, your linked Coupa Pay customer can choose to transfer ownership of a shared payment account to you in the CSP.

When you add a Bank Transfer payment method on the Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP) that matches a bank account your customer (buyer) already has on file, Coupa links the two automatically instead of leaving them as separate, disconnected records. For more information, see Payment Methods Auto-linked to Matching Payment Accounts in Coupa.

Your buyer can then choose to transfer ownership of their Supplier Payment Account to you, giving you direct control over future updates to the payment account in the CSP. If they don't, nothing changes on your end: the accounts just stay linked and in sync. This is available to all suppliers working with Coupa Pay buyers.

To access and manage the linked payment methods, ensure the following:

  • Your CSP user account has the Payment Method Admin permission assigned, set up by your organization's CSP administrator under user permissions. For more information, see Manage Users in the CSP.

  • The linked customer's sharing status for the payment method is Shared Successfully.

Before the buyer transfers account ownership

Ownership can be transferred by the Coupa Pay buyer to suppliers who have created a bank transfer payment method on the CSP that matches an existing Supplier Payment Account on the buyer's Coupa instance, and who have shared that payment method with that buyer.

After you share your payment method with the linked customer, the sharing status for that customer shows as Shared Successfully on the payment method at Business Profile > Payment Methods.

Before the buyer transfers ownership, your payment method remains linked to the buyer's Supplier Payment Amount, which is buyer-owned. In the case, the following applies:
If you deactivate the payment method on the CSP:
The linked payment account on the customer's instance is also deactivated.
If the buyer deactivates the payment account from Coupa:
The customer is unlinked from the corresponding payment method on the CSP. As a supplier, you can re-share the payment method with the buyer in the future if they need to create a new payment account in Coupa.
If you edit the payment method (without ownership transfer from buyer):
Changes do not impact the payment account on the buyer's instance. The buyer retains control of the payment account.

In the background, the customer receives a notification prompting them to decide whether to transfer account ownership to you, or they see the option to transfer ownership directly on the payment account screen in Coupa.

They may take action immediately or at a later time — there is no set deadline. Until they act, your payment method remains in Shared Successfully status and the account continues to be managed by the buyer.

Note: You can directly contact your linked customer for a Bank Transfer payment method using inline comments, for example to ask if they can transfer account ownership. For more information, see Communicate with Buyers Using Comments on Payment Methods.

After the buyer transfers account ownership

What triggers the change
The buyer initiates the ownership transfer from their Coupa instance. For security, they must confirm the action using multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their side. No action is required from you to trigger or approve this step.
What you see on the CSP after transfer
Once the customer completes the ownership transfer, the customer link status for the relevant customer on your CSP payment method updates to reflect that management rights for the account are transferred to you, and the buyer can no longer make changes to it.

From the CSP, you can update any of the payment method's editable attributes (for example, nickname and supporting documents). Changes then automatically flow through to the customer's Supplier Payment Account on their Coupa instance.

For more information, see View and Manage Payment Methods Information in the CSP.