As direct debit still is one of the most convenient ways to pay bills, especially when paying monthly recurring payments like gym member ship fees or monthly subscription of magazines or news. It is not only convenient for merchant but for consumer.
E-mandate looks really nice on SEPA paper, when consumer gives a right for merchant to bill me every month or just one time. The thing what in most of the e-mandate solutions is lacking is local solution which is hard to extend outside local and natural
country borders. For example, if service company (online movie rental for example) in Spain offers e-mandate for consumer to order service from Spain, but consumer is located in Sweden, then e-mandate needs to have swedish solution to identify customer. Not
too many companies are ready to take this extra step and offer several e-id solutions to offer DD as payment when service is online. Then recurring credit card option is better, even it will cost more for merchant.
We have been working on with few companies where offering e-mandate as service and identifying customers online. This DD online payment option has raised some interest with companies who would like to continue to use DD as one alternative solution to pay,
even business has transformed to online.
Now I would like to hear your real life solutions how you use DD, is there any electronic mechanism to identify customers online or do you just fill out online form and trust that company who gets it, can act the way you trust them.