We're a web-based business

We’re a web-based business so accepting payment by cheque (which are being phased out in any event) or cash goes against our very ‘modus operandi’ such that in countries where payments by Direct Debit (or the local equivalent) is available, we have taken the business decision to only accept payments by Direct Debit.

To that end we have built much of the billing functionality of the software around that end-goal. We’re a SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) authorised Direct Debit ('DD') biller ('creditor'). 

In our experience, payment by Direct Debit is faster, more secure, and produces less administrative overheads on the payer and the payee. Under the SEPA DD arrangement, organisations have the right to cancel their SEPA Direct Debit at any time by writing to Complyfile Limited and informing your bank.

Advantages for Complyfile customers include:

• The customer avoids the inconvenience of printing, signing and mailing a paper form to the creditor by using a fully electronic process instead.
• The e-mandate facility is based on secure, widely used online banking services of the customer's bank; the customer, therefore, can simply rely on the online banking procedures he or she is already familiar with.

Advantages for Complyfile include:

• Allows fully automated end-to-end processing of e-mandates including issuing, amendment and cancellation of such mandates while eliminating the need to deal with a multitude of local, technical or organisational barriers.
• The e-mandate is agreed on in a secure way.
• The confirmation of the customer's right to access the account is specified by the customer's bank.
• The e-mandate process allows automatic storage and retrieval of e-mandate data.

Why DD not CC?

Volunteer administrators may have their own personal credit cards; but the process of incurring a monthly or annual charge on your own personal credit card, when it's not for you but rather is for the organisation; well, in our experience, most volunteer managers prefer that the organisation pays. It also avoids the time-consuming bit on your side of having to submit monthly expenses receipts.

From our side, Direct Debit enables Complyfile to reduce internal and external administrative costs from dealing with credit card payments, enabling us to keep the costs of the Complyfile licence down. We also avoid the risk of having to suspend access to an organisation's Complyfile in circumstances where an individual's personal credit card has reached its credit limit, expired or encountered some other unforeseen issue.