Financial institutions and service providers are in the process of rolling out this pan-European electronic mandate solution for SEPA Core Direct Debits (SDDs) to corporate and retail customers across Europe. By enabling buyers to conveniently pay via SDD when shopping or settling bills online, MyBank Mandates extends the benefits of this popular payment instrument to the digital environment.

“The changeover to SEPA has finally been achieved, except for a couple of open points that still need to be addressed, such as Internet-enabled mandates. For e-commerce businesses, it is of crucial importance to be able to set up mandates with their customers in a fully electronic way, i.e.

without the need for a manual signature,” said Steffen von Blumröder, Head of Department Banking & Financial Services, BITKOM, Germany’s Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media.

“MyBank Mandates is the next building block in creating a suite of services to support payments and identity services in the digital space.

There is a clear demand from consumers and merchants for a simple and secure authorisation process for direct debits,” said John Broxis, Managing Director of PRETA S.A.S.

MyBank Mandates provides customers with an easy way to agree online and in real time that their account can be debited. Merchants and public authorities across Europe will be able to replace paper mandates with this efficient new solution.

Since paper mandates are expensive and lead to higher rejection rates for the first collection, moving to a real-time electronic process that involves the bank of the debtor helps to reduce costs and the time required to collect funds.