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url: /features/payers-and-ibans.md
---
# Payers & Personal IBANs

A payer represents the person who funds a policy's premiums, and belongs to a subscriber. Each payer can register one or more personal IBANs used to collect single and recurring premium payments.

## Payer

A payer is created against an existing subscriber, with a validated email and phone number.

## Personal IBANs

* An IBAN is validated on registration, and its country must be authorized.
* The same IBAN cannot be registered twice for the same payer.
* One IBAN can be marked as the default for the payer — it cannot be deleted while it holds that status.
* An IBAN cannot be deleted while it is still associated with a premium request.

## Direct debit

Failed direct debits are tracked per payer so they can be identified and retried.

## Safe retries

Creating a payer and registering a personal IBAN accept the optional `X-Quarzo-Life-Idempotency-Key` header. A retry with the same key and request returns the original response without creating anything again, and the same key with a different request returns `409 IDEMPOTENCY_KEY_CONFLICT`. Requests without the header behave as before.

## Related

* [Premium Payments](/features/premium-payments)
* [Glossary: Payee](/glossary/payee)
* [Error Handling → Payer & IBAN errors](/errors/)