SEPA Mandate Management – Module

SEPA DIRECT DEBIT – SDD

Since the implementation of SDD (SEPA Direct Debit), a unique, harmonised direct debit process for the SEPA zone (European payment zone), all economic players can benefit from the same payment conditions across the entire European territory.

Committed to embracing this new standard and meeting the needs of SEPA zone creditors, DataLog Finance has designed a mandate management module, integrated in its full-Web range of CashSolutions, thereby opening new horizons in the area of mandate management.

Replacing the traditional bank direct debit across Europe, the SDD transfers the management of bank mandates to creditors who hold a SEPA identifier, in order to rationalise and accelerate the direct debit procedures throughout the territory. The mandate is then kept by the creditor, but can be consulted and revoked at any time by the debtor on demand.

The CashSolutions’ mandate management module takes advantage of the SDD, communicating with the banks to debit the account of a consenting debtor at the creditor’s request, freeing the banks of complex, slow and heterogeneous cross-border procedures and providing paperless continuity in the creditor-debtor-bank relations.

The CashSolutions Mandate Management Module

Available as SaaS or hosted in-house, the CashSolutions mandate management module uses the information contained in the CashSolutions database, enabling the user to avoid having to reprocess or re-enter the group’s data repository, especially entities, third parties, banks, accounts and BIC-IBAN codes used to manage direct debits.
This way the module offers the ability to manage all of your credit accounts and mandates in a single tool without any additional configuration in order to constitute a secure, up-to-date, flexible and quickly operational mandate database.

Using the CashSolutions import/export modules, this module offers advanced mandate management, including the following functionalities:

• mandate information processing and verification
• comprehensive management of the mandate life-cycle
• generation of SDDs
• transmission of bank direct debit requests
• reception of direct debit acknowledgements and confirmations

The mandate management module is not limited to the comprehensive management of your mandates for all of your credit entities; it also processes the payment flows associated with these transactions via the CashSolutions workflow, including processing the files exchanged with banks to ensure information circulates from one end to the other of the chain.

The Module’s Advantages

The mandate management module, via the CashSolutions multi-format and multi-file import module, collects and centralises:

• the group’s creditors
• the banks of the creditors and debtors
• the accounts of the creditors and debtors
• the BIC-IBANs of the creditors and debtors
• all of the group’s creditor mandates

Functional Coverage

Creating/Recovering Mandates

The paper mandate must first be dematerialised via an EDM. The proposed component has the ability to store the digitised image of the paper mandate

The mandate management module manages the traditional data repository for a payment module: Entities, Banks, Accounts, Currencies, BIC, etc. And other tables can be added without limit: portfolios, populations, issuing applications, etc.

Mandate Statuses

The mandate statuses managed by CashSolutions are: (valid, null and void, revoked, cancelled, dispute, incomplete, pending signature, follow-up 1, follow-up 2, follow-up 3, other user statuses).

• Management of initial statuses

An initial mandate is a mandate whose status is “Pending signature.” This mandate is then signed: either in its physical form, with receipt of the paper mandate, dematerialisation and archiving of the digitised proof, or directly in the paperless form, with archiving of the digitised proof.

Via the UMR (Unique Mandate Reference) the link can be established between the initial mandate present in the mandate data repository and the mandate signed, received and archived in the proof archiving system. The mandate’s status can then be valued as “Valid.”

• Management of advanced statuses

The mandate management module manages the amendment concept provided for in the EPC rulebooks.

Asynchronous Mandate Signature

For a mandate to be activated in the system, the client has to sign it. Nevertheless, if the mandate entered in the database isn’t signed, it can be activated later and the signature process can be asynchronous.

Our solution has the ability to generate follow-ups when a mandate has in an intermediate status in the database (initiated but not signed / not validated) for quite some time.

Our solution can interface with:

• an SMTP gateway to send electronic messages
• outgoing desktop publishing applications to send physical letters

Management of Multi-Contract Mandates

The user can consult a mandate via the mandate management module and display the list of all contract references this mandate is used for. It can then:

• delete the link between this mandate and one of the contracts
• enter a new mandate and specify the new BIC/IBAN pair as the bank account ID

Request for Automatic Direct Debit

The process for establishing direct debit for a contract on a bank account will use various sub-processes, including in particular:

• depending on the cases that arise, potentially creating a new mandate by calling on adequate web services or directly in CashSolutions. This creation can potentially be “partial,” with incomplete data, which will then be completed later.
• capturing the mandate, physically archiving it, dematerialising it and storing the digitised data.

Request to Consult a Mandate

Once it has issued direct debit orders, the company is likely to receive requests for copies of the mandate (especially when the client wants to contest the transaction once the 8-week waiting period after the debit date has passed), as specified in the SEPA Direct Debit Rulebook.

In this case, the Treasury department must be able to respond by searching for the proof of Mandate and by sending it to the bank that requested the copy (the creditor’s bank should then send this document to the debtor’s bank). The preferred channel chosen for these requests is the SWIFT channel, with the use of MT199 type free messages. Requests can also arrive by email or even by fax.

Receiving the Proof of M mandate

• Via letter received by the SEPA incoming EDM
• Via letter received by a third party incoming EDM
• Via a paperless signature process
• Archiving the correspondence

Mandate Amendment

The mandate management module manages the amendment concept provided for in the EPC rulebooks.

Mandate Revocation

In the case of revocation, CashPooler would immediately reject any direct debit orders generated.

Bank Accounts Management

Since the SEPA imposes the use of IBANs and BICs (at least until the elimination of the obligation to supply BICs for SEPA transactions), CashSolutions can manage the RIB and IBAN concepts simultaneously in its data repository; some accounts can include the RIB and others the IBANs.

Furthermore, CashSolutions can be used to calculate the IBAN and the BIC from the RIB and the BICPlusIBAN data repository (or its successor SWIFTRef), either to update the third party data repository or on the fly during order imports.

Management and Transmission of Flows

Like any other payment flow, SEPA flows are managed in CashPooler, which is responsible for adding SEPA mandate data to direct debit orders and processing validations

Some images Features

Introduction to some module views

Brief Summary

The CashSolutions mandate management module provides:

• the exclusive full-Web management of direct debits delegated to creditors, including:
• the archiving of mandates and their images
• the resumption of pre-SEPA direct debits (paper mandates dematerialised via an EDM)
• the ability to materially present a complete and authenticated mandate in case it is contested
• the management of all types of direct debit (intragroup, B to C, recurrent or one-off direct debits, etc.)
• comprehensive control panels to monitor in particular imports, exports, bank communications, user activities, etc.
• absolute compliance with the SEPA compliance rules, ensuring complete and legal SDDs
• notification to the debtor of the direct debit several days before the actual direct debit
• sending direct debit and mandate modification execution notices to both parties (SMS, email)
• the quality and security of the CashSolutions platform (data recovery and confidentiality, multi-protocol bank communication, multi-format and multi-file import/export, painless load increases, etc.)
• fast implementation and operational use of the solution (in-house or SaaS).