What are the different types of payment methods I can use?

There are two types of payment methods you can use:

• Direct Debit
• debit card

We don’t accept payment by cheques and prepaid debit cards.

We recommend using Direct Debit as it’s the easiest way to pay contributions to us.

Using Direct Debit with NEST means you can always control the timing and amount of your payments. Direct Debit is just the mechanism we use to manage your payments once you’ve approved them. This isn’t the kind of Direct Debit that goes out of your account automatically. 

We’ll only collect the amount shown on the contribution schedule once you click ‘Submit schedule’. 

When you click ‘Submit schedule’, you’ll be asked to select ‘Pay now’ or ‘Pay later’. If you select ‘Pay now’, you’ll see a message confirming the payment is in progress and the money will be collected within five working days. If you select ‘Pay later’, you’ll get an option to select a date in the future. You’ll be able to select any date between three working days from the present day and the payment due date of the schedule.

We recommend you to set up the Direct Debit mandate before you enrol any workers. It takes six working days to set up a Direct Debit mandate if you have the authority to do this.

If you don’t have authority you’ll need to ask the account holder to log in and authorise the mandate from their online NEST account.

If they don’t have a NEST online account you can add them as a full access delegate. Once they’re added as a full access delegate they can log in to their online NEST account and authorise the mandate.

If more than one signature is needed to authorise the mandate you’ll need to print the Direct Debit mandate form, get it signed by the authorised signatories and send it to us to the address shown onscreen once it’s been completed. It’ll take up to 11 working days for the Direct Debit to be set up from the day we receive the completed mandate form.

For more information on setting up Direct Debit mandate please see What should I do if I’ve chosen Direct Debit for my new payment source?

A debit card payment source will be ready to use straight away. If you choose to use debit card as your payment method then you’ll have to manage each payment manually every time you send money to NEST. You’ll be able to submit contribution schedules for payment as soon as the payment source has been set up. To find more information on how to submit the contribution schedules for payment please see How do I pay contributions to NEST?