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What are the advantages of E-mandates?

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As the Global Payment Partnership Lead for SEPA Laura and her team manage the relationship with GoCardless' partner banks for the European SEPA scheme, ensuring current and future banking partners can deliver what GoCardless needs to serve merchants in the best way possible. As the Global Payment Partnerships Lead Laura has developed in-depth knowledge of SEPA and how GoCardless works with the scheme, becoming the resident expert on SEPA. ConnectSee full bio

Last editedMay 20221 min read

E-mandates have many advantages over paper and paperless mandates, most notably in terms of security.

In the future, banks may also be able to offer the e-mandate function. This may offer further benefits. This is an optional service in SEPA and banks do not have to offer it.

E-mandates have an advantage over paper and paperless mandates in terms of security:

Familiar banking procedures - e-mandates use the secure, widely used online banking services of a customer’s bank. The customer, therefore, can simply rely on familiar online banking procedures. Customers can also re-use their online banking credentials or other bank provided electronic access channels to complete the mandate online. No additional means of identification are required. This decreases the risk of fraud.

Despite this clear advantage, there remains a relative dearth of e-mandate providers on the market. For the e-mandate service to work it needs to be taken up by a significant number of the banks. GoCardless has therefore developed a paperless model which enables merchants to set up and manage securely SEPA Direct Debits online.