Direct debit payments account for almost 20% of the payments made in France (on an annual basis), making direct debits the second most popular payment method in the country—the most popular one being payment cards. If you’ve ever tried both direct debit and card purchases, you’ve probably already noticed that card payments were much more sensitive than direct debit ones—card payments can fail for lots of technical reasons.
Sure, payment cards tend to be accepted everywhere, but they can fail as soon as a little detail goes wrong. An expired card or a wrong authentication code is all that’s required to ruin your client’s payment. Direct debit payments are reliable. Because there’s no card network involved. Direct debit payments rely on bank-to-bank transactions. If you collected your client’s SEPA mandate, and if the bank account you’re about to pull money from is not in negative territory, then your direct debit payment is very likely to go through.