Mandates or Direct Debit Instructions (DDIs) are the starting point for your Direct Debit payments processing. A signed mandates/DDI gives your business the legal authority to debit funds from your payers' accounts for the goods or services that you supply.
What is a Mandate/ DDI?
Important: Each of your payers must sign a mandate/DDI before you can take any Direct Debit payments!
Direct Debits are a Pull payment method (you, as a merchant, are pulling funds from your payers’ accounts).
When paying for your service with Credit or Debit Cards, for example, note that your payers:
- Are fully in control of the payment and they decide when to credit funds to you.
- Card payments are Push payments (your payers push payments to you).
As a merchant, having the ability to initiate a pull payment is very powerful. To ensure that payers are safeguarded and are fully aware that you will be taking (pulling) payments from their accounts at certain points in time, they must formally agree to allow you to take these pull payments.
Note: This agreement between the payer and merchant is the Mandate (in SEPA) and the Direct Debit Instruction (in Bacs). It is a legal agreement that informs users that they are agreeing to have their bank account debited periodically and also provides them with full details of their refund rights.
SEPA Guarantee
The following text must be displayed on all SEPA mandates:
By signing this mandate form, you authorise (A) {Company Name} to send instructions to your bank to debit your account and (B) your bank to debit your account in accordance with the instructions from {Company Name}. As part of your rights, you are entitled to a refund from your bank under the terms and conditions of your agreement with your bank. A refund must be claimed within 8 weeks starting from the date on which your account was debited.
Bacs Guarantee
For Bacs the Direct Debit Guarantee and Direct Debit logo must be provided on all Direct Debit Instructions, and the following text is mandatory:
Mandate/DDI Types
You may chose to collect mandates on paper, with a normal ink signature; alternatively mandates/DDIs can be handled electronically (with authorisation being provided via a check box or SMS code, for example). Nuapay offers you the flexibility to choose either approach.
For more information on electronic mandates, see the E-Mandates section.
Note: All your mandates/DDIs must be linked to a specific originator identifier that is unique to your business. This identifier is the Creditor Scheme ID (in the SEPA schemes) or the Service User Number (SUN in the Bacs Direct Debit scheme).