SARB clamps down on debit order fraud
Are you among the thousands of people who have been a victim of a debit order scam? Then breathe easy, South Africans will soon have more control over what is deducted from their accounts.
From May 1, consumers are expected to provide authorisation for debit orders in an effort by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to address increasing levels of fraud.
The Authenticated Collections (AC)/DebiCheck project forms part of the modernisation of the national payment system by the SARB and is an initiative of the collections industry to mitigate abuse in the current early debit order (EDO) payment system.
According to SARB, all new and renegotiated EDO mandates will be originated in the AC/DebiCheck payment system from next month and not in the current EDO payment system.
“EDOs will only be processed through the AC/DebiCheck payment system, while normal debit orders will still be processed later in the day, as per current arrangements. Before then, consumers would provide a mandate to a company or user to collect money from their bank account.
“In the new AC/DebiCheck payment system, consumers will provide authorisation to their bank, by way of an authenticated mandate, to release the funds from their account when a debit order is submitted by a company or user from whom they bought goods or contracted for a service,” said SARB.
Companies or users of the system had until November 1, 2019, to fully implement it.
“Owing to the complex nature of the AC/DebiCheck system, a lengthy ramp-up period was required to ensure that all stakeholders in the EDO collections ecosystem had implemented and tested their internal processes and interfaces to the AC/DebiCheck payment system,” explained SARB.
Source: SANews.gov.za
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