Direct Debit Mandate: Fill & Download for Free

At GoCardless we've been processing SEPA Direct Debits (in beta) for a few dozen merchants since December 2013. We'll exit beta in December 2014.A couple of observations along the way:- The banks themselves are almost all reachable by SEPA Direct Debit, but their originating capabilities aren't fully built out. We've had to work with our sponsor bank to iron out errors in their processes.- There are a lot of areas to slip up when implementing SEPA Direct Debit. Mandate management is one. Use of BICs is another. We've learnt the hard way over the last 11 months, thanks to a generous and patient group of beta testers. Lots of providers are still working through these issues.- If you want to take Direct Debit payments from both the UK and Europe things get even more painful - the two schemes look completely different (and the UK has no plans to convert its national Direct Debit scheme).- Many of the players in the Direct Debit space aren't tech companies, and are struggling to adapt their systems and processes to a new system.

User cofounded Sign2Pay (see Home - Sign2Pay ), which is pretty darn innovative. Their company is specifically tackling the SEPA Direct Debit market, with the SEPDA Direct Debit directive, which basically guarantees payment, based on a simple signature... and they do this for mobile commerce (i.e. mobile payments).If you're in mainland Europe you will recognize this device:This is required every time you use your Bank issued debit card for internet banking, mobile banking, or offline payments.This is what User' company has replaced with with:That is correct: A signature. As per the SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) mandate, a signature is all that is required by the Biller to get payment (See more on SDD on EPC | SEPA Direct Debit - The SDD Mandate)No more modules to plug-in the card, get a one-time key out, etc. and if you're thinking a signature is not secure, thinking again! Over 12,000+ parameters are present on a signature - it is very very secure.By having a seamless sign to pay feature on the phone, I believe they've cracked the mobile commerce market for SEPA using the direct debit access.No more complex forms, card readers, etc. impulsive buying on a signature. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

Completely unrelated.Sofortbanking = (online initiated) credit transfer.Direct debit = charging of customer's account based on his approval ("mandate") to do it.So credit transfer is a "push" and direct debit is a "pull" method of executing a payment.