With the goal to make the invoice friendlier and the payment easier for the customer we have designed payme. We see the invoice process as a customer contact possibility and turn a payment request into a conversation with the customer. Simplified and automated payments should increase the payment within the requested due date of the invoice.
find more details on the project page: pay.railslove.com
The idea
Create a one-click invoice payment solution. That requires next to nothing from the customer to pay the invoice. No online banking, no credit card, just a known bank account.
We do not rely on any third-party services but directly communicate with our bank.
The customer simply confirms the payment and we pull the money from the given bank account using direct debit. We fully focus on the usability for the customer not on minimizing the chargeback risk for the merchant.
How does it work?
We collect the payment using SEPA Direct Debit. The requirements for the customer are pretty much zero (only a bank account in one of the SEPA countries is required) and for us it is the cheapest payment method.
The user confirms the invoice and authorizes the payment by “signing” a mandate on an friendly designed website. Once the payment is confirmed we transfer the SEPA debit request to our bank using EBICS (the Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard). Our bank executes the debit and collects the money.
For the customer the process could not be any easier: One click to confirm the debit information – DONE.
Who is using it?
We have build payme mainly as a showcase for our EBICS solutions. We use it to request payments from our customers.
Due to it’s simplicity we got quite some interest in the application. Let us know if you are interested: [email protected].
What exactly is SEPA Direct Debit?
SEPA Direct Debit is a Europe-wide Direct Debit system that allows merchants to collect payments from accounts in the 34 SEPA countries. SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area. SEPA Direct Debits are pull-based: once the customer has signed a mandate allowing the merchant to withdraw funds from his account the merchant can initiate the direct debit through his bank. And because direct debits are bank-to-bank no third-party needs be involved. (unlike when paying with card)
To accept direct debits the merchant has to fulfil some requirements like managing the mandates and applying for a creditor id. Also the bank needs to allow the merchant to execute the debits.
The main reason to not support direct debits for merchants is the high risk for expensive chargebacks. The customer can reverse the transaction without providing any reason for up to two months. I guess this is the price we have to pay for the missing authentication during the payment. (Thinking of the risk for chargebacks a direct debit is pretty much the exact opposite of Bitcoin – but that is another story.)
If you want to use direct debits for your business we recommend talking to SEPAone.com. The Railslove customer provides a full service solution for direct debits.
What’s under the hood?
Payme is a Ruby on Rails application using our EBICS::Box to transmit the SEPA direct debit request to our bank. The EBICS::Box generates the needed Payment Initialization (PAIN) messages for the transaction and transfers the request to our local bank using our Open Source EBICS implementation. EBICS stands for Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard and is an open standard to exchange data with financial institutions. Our EBICS::Box allows a simple integration into any application without having to deal with the technical and financial details.
What do you think? Want your own payme?
We are building simple innovative online payment solutions and we would love to hear your feedback about the application. What do you think about the application? Do you like your own payme? – Contact us: [email protected]
