This release introduces Welsh language support across the Access DDCMS platform and eDD sign up forms. Clients operating in Wales/Welsh speaking individuals can now offer a bilingual Direct Debit service to their customers, in compliance with Bacs rules for bilingual Direct Debit Instructions (Section 13H of the Direct Debit Rule Book).

Important Note: Welsh language support is not enabled by default. To activate this feature for your organisation, please contact Access PaySuite support. Once enabled, the bilingual options described below will become available in your DDCMS interface.

A new Language field is available on each customer record, allowing you to set whether a customer should receive communications in English or Welsh. This preference drives automatic template selection across all communications.

When viewing a customer profile, a Language field is now available in the Personal Details section. You can set this to English or Welsh. New customers default to English.

When Welsh language support is disabled for your organisation, existing Welsh customers’ preferences remain visible and can be changed to English, but new preferences cannot be set to Welsh.

Language Preference has been added as a field in the existing bulk update facility, allowing you to update the language preference for multiple customers at once. If Welsh language support is disabled for your organisation, the Welsh option will not be available in the bulk update.

A new optional LanguagePreference column is available in file upload templates for clients with Welsh language enabled. The column accepts “EN”, “en”, or “en-GB” for English and “CY”, “cy”, or “cy-GB” for Welsh. If the column is omitted, customers default to English. Invalid language codes are flagged in the error report, and Welsh values are rejected if Welsh support is not enabled for your organisation.

The LanguagePreference column appears in the Template Designer and System Templates only when Welsh language support is enabled for your organisation. If Welsh is not enabled, the column is not visible.

The customer create and update API endpoints now accept an optional “language_preference” parameter. Accepted values are “en-GB” for English and “cy-GB” for Welsh. If omitted, the customer defaults to English. If Welsh support is not enabled for your organisation, submitting “cy-GB” returns a 400 error with the message “Welsh language not enabled for this client”.

When creating Direct Debits via the API with a Welsh language preference, the DD confirmation will use the Welsh template if one is available.

All customer communications — including Advance Notice Letters (ANLs), cancellation letters, and confirmation emails — now support Welsh language templates.

The system automatically selects the correct language template based on each customer’s language preference when generating communications. Welsh customers receive Welsh communications, and English customers receive English communications, with no manual intervention required.

If a Welsh template is not available for a particular communication type, the system automatically falls back to the English template to ensure that communications are never missed. You will be notified via email to your correspondence address when a Welsh template is missing, including details of the template type needed and the number of customers affected, so you can verify the required template is in place.

Dynamic content within Welsh templates — such as payment frequencies, dates, and day names — is automatically translated into Welsh. For example, “monthly” displays as “misol”, “annually” as “blynyddol”, and month names appear in Welsh (e.g. Ionawr, Chwefror, Mawrth).

Welsh special characters (ŵ, ŷ, â, ê, î, ô, û) are fully supported throughout the system. These characters display correctly in the DDCMS interface, customer communications, and generated PDFs.

Language Preference is now available as a field in the custom reporting suite. You can use it as a selectable column, a filter option, a grouping criterion, or a searchable field. Reports can be exported with language preference data included.

As part of this release, Direct Debit reference validation has been strengthened across all channels (web form, API, and file upload) to ensure Bacs compliance:

Once Welsh language support has been enabled for your organisation, your eDD sign up forms will offer bilingual capability for customers signing up to Direct Debits.

A language selector is displayed on your eDD registration form, allowing customers to choose between English-only and bilingual (Welsh/English) display. English is selected by default. When a customer selects Welsh, the form displays bilingually with Welsh and English content side-by-side, matching the Bacs-approved bilingual Direct Debit Instruction template (13H). Switching between languages happens without a page reload, and any data the customer has already entered is preserved. When a customer completes a sign-up in Welsh, their language preference is automatically saved to their customer profile in DDCMS, ensuring all future communications are sent in Welsh without any manual action required. Once a customer selects their language preference, it is maintained throughout the entire sign-up process across all form pages and steps. Customers do not need to reselect their language on each page.

Customers can access the bilingual form directly by appending a language parameter to the registration URL. Adding “Locale=cy-GB” to the form URL will load the form in bilingual mode automatically. This allows you to share or embed Welsh-language links for your customers. If Welsh support is not enabled for your organisation, the parameter is ignored and the form loads in English.

All mandatory fields on the bilingual form use Bacs-approved Welsh translations exactly as specified in the Direct Debit Rule Book template 13H. This includes the service user details, bank account fields, the instruction to the bank, and the Direct Debit Guarantee text. These mandatory translations are system-controlled and cannot be modified, ensuring ongoing regulatory compliance.

The update will be applied to everyone on our SaaS platform on 07/05/2026.