The acronyms SEPA (Single Europe Payments Area) are used to refer to lifelong direct debits (technically known as direct debits), but which have been updated to allow the collection of receipts domiciled throughout the European Union in a simple manner, economic and above all placing speacial emphasis on the protection of the debtor (the one that has to pay).

Some time ago the SEPA regulation came into force replacing notebook 19 (and others), with some significant changes:

• Two different «schemes» have been created depending on whether you sre going to charge individuals and legals entities (called Basic or Core) or only companies (B2B).

• Now it is necessary that the debtor sign a document (called the SEPA mandate) by which he leaves a written record as he agrees to be charged an amount for a specific concept directly to his current account, either recurrent or on time. Therefore if we charge a client/user for different concepts we must have different SEPA mandates.

• The mandate includes a reference, which is a unique identifier for that document. The reference can NOT be repeated, and must contain up to 35 ncharacters.

• In the basic scheme, the return period is much longer. In case of not having the mandate it can be up to 13 months, and having it is 8 weeks. In the Core scheme there is no possibility of return.

• There are more changes, but these are the ones that most affect the majority of end users.

And why should my association use the SEPA model to collect recurring fees?

Mainly because it is simple to use and cheaper than a card charge, which makes it an ideal method for associations.

Here are the benefits of using SEPA:

• It allows us to periodically send a receipt to our debtors for an amount and that the bank is in charge of making the collections to the entities of our clients.

• It does not require us to implement any specific ecommerce software, banking gateway or anything similar: we only need the signed mandate and a bank account from which to charge.

• The cost is relatively low compared to other charging systems. This point will depend on the bank you work with, but it usually costs between 0,15 and 1 € per receipt, far from the 0,35 € + 3,4% Paypal, for example.

• The debtor does not have to do anything to accept the charges beyond signing the mandate: nothing to be given payment keys, card number, etc.

Therefore, it is clear that in the case of associations and organizations with many users / clients to whom periodic collections are made, such as annual, monthly or semi-annual fees, the use of the SEPA model is highly attractive.

If this is your case, you have to try our SEPA collection management tool: quickly generate the collection orders each month without having to calculate who you have to pay: Timtul calculates it for you