Services related to payments

Management of direct debit mandates and authorisations

Direct debit mandates (or authorisations) may be managed by using SEPAmail. From the first commercial exchange between the customer and the company, the latter, necessarily aware of the IBAN of its customer, sends a data flow to its bank. This flow corresponds to the mandate.

After the transmission to the debtor's bank, this bank may provide these data to its customer and request a validation by using usual authentication tools that are at the customer's disposal.

A detailed version of this concept is the GEMME application.

The payment request

The payment request (equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon "bill presentment") is performed through SEPAmail as soon as the provider owns the IBAN of its customer in order to send him data. These data may include a PDF document for an increased readibility.

The structured data are directly used by the information system of the debtor's bank in order to create the credit transfer once the customer has provided its validation.

A detailed version of this concept is the RUBIS application.

Remote and Internet payment

The system based on payment request may be extended with additional functionalities of guarantee management.

From the customer's standpoint, this allows to migrate from "payment on invoice" to internet payments or to "large amount" payments (cars for instance) between individuals.

Enriched payment notifications

SEPAmail may also transport data after or in parallel of a credit transfer or of a direct debit (later on a card number may also be sufficient). As soon as a customer's bank has performed such an operation, the bank necessarily knows the customer's IBAN. It is then easy for him to forward additional information, the payment initial reference for a transmission via SEPAmail.

This may allow the dematerialised transmission: payslips, benefits statements, payment notifications and more generally any document type of the "financial supply chain".

Such a service is currently being launched and is called JADE

A carbon accounting related to all means of payment

In the context of the question of sustainable development, building consolidated statements on the CO2 consumption is a major need.

The principle of this accounting is described below:

• the selling company will send additional information on the purchase,
• these data will allow a CO2 valorization by linking to a third party referential,
• this third party referential will allow the control of other green houses gases,
• the link between the data and the purchase allows the routing with SEPAmail towards all the actors of the payment chain.

In the SEPAmail use, the company sends structured data by indicating the reference of the means of payment with which the purchase was performed:

• IBAN when the means of payment is the credit transfer or the direct debit
• PAN (card number) if a bank card is used
• a "hardcoded" BIC type reference for cash

The creditor's bank fulfills the third party referential data and may then:

• create, for the company, a consolidated statement of sales in "carbon units"
• send the data to the debtor's bank in the case of the IBAN and of the PAN
• send the data to a unique entity for cash.

The unique entity may then create consolidated statements related to the use of cash in carbon unit and the debtor banks may gather the data of their customers to create consolidated statements in carbon unit.

"Remittances" funds transfers

These funds transfers have two requirements:

• an immediacy of the transfer so that the person receiving the funds may use them as soon as possible
• a costs reduction not to put a strain on the transfered amount by fees applied to the transfer

In addition, the fact that the persons reveiving the funds dot not have any bank relationship involves to work with non banking actors.

In this context, a proposition valuing SEPAmail may come in 2 forms:

• guarantee the immediacy by a SEPAmail secure message arriving in flash time (few seconds) to the network distributing the funds (network on the diagram)
• use a European bank account of the distributing network to process the clearing:
  • in general, any distributing network runs business in at least one European country
  • this allows to send a SEPA credit transfer, ie at a very reduced cost
  • the distributing network has the responsibility to manage its funds on this account with levelling movements. These movements should be related to volumes to avoid a clearing transaction, Swift in most cases, for a funds transfer.