- INTRODUCTION
Have any of your customers ever disputed a debit order that was legitimately processed against their bank account in favour of you in terms of a debit order mandate? Has your personal bank account ever been debited without your permission? If not, you’ve probably heard of someone who has experienced these rather unfortunate incidents. Well, these disputes will soon be a thing of the past. in this post we’ve set out how the Payments Association of South Africa (“PASA“) has planned to put a stop to debit order abuse.
- CURB ON DEBIT ORDER ABUSE
Many of us are familiar with the current workings of debit order authorisation. In brief, a service provider who collects its revenue by means of debit orders is required to enter into a written or oral agreement, commonly known as a “debit order mandate”, with customers. A valid debit order mandate serves as proof of consensus between a customer and the service provider for the repeated deduction of an agreed amount from the customer’s bank account. A service provider would request payment from the customer’s bank, based on the authority from the customer.
PASA (the Payments Association of South Africa, a body created by law to organise, manage and regulate the participation of its members in the South African payment system) has been receiving a significant number of complaints relating to debit order abuse by both customers and service providers. While most complaints related to debit orders processed to customer’s bank accounts without valid debit order mandates, some complaints related to debit orders which had been legitimately processed (where the customer disputes a legitimate debit order and has the payment reversed). PASA –mandated by the South African Reserve Bank (“SARB“) – has found a solution to this ever-growing problem. PASA has introduced Debicheck, a new debit order system which will hopefully bring peace of mind to service providers and customers alike.
- HOW A DEBICHECK WILL OPERATE
In terms of Directive No. 1 of 2017 issued by SARB, the participant (i.e. bank) who is responsible for carrying out the payment instruction from a service provider (i.e. the bank customer’s creditor) must notify its customer (i.e. debtor / the service provider’s customer) of the proposed debit orders before making any deductions against the customer’s account. Customers will be required to approve or reject the proposed debit order and confirm any material information relating to such debit order, such as the service provider’s details, amount to be deducted and the date of debit order. Customers will also be required to re-approve any debit orders when the mandate changes.
According to the Directive, all debit order mandates concluded after the cut-off date (currently 31 January 2019) must comply with these requirements. In other words, these requirements do not apply to debit orders which are already in existence before the cut-off date.
- CONCLUSION
Through the Debicheck system, banks will have a record of all confirmed and rejected debit orders – meaning that no debit orders will be loaded by a bank without a customer’s positive authorisation of the debit order. As a result of the consents and rejections being recorded, it is unlikely that there would be debit order abuse on Debicheck debit orders.
