SDD: RBS and Commerzbank Offers
- RBS now proposes SDD to its British customers through its Bankline portal. The bank has already recruited two UK-based customers: Harland, a processor for the British clearing house BACS and Esendex, a UK business SMS supplier. Harland intends to expand internationally and Esendex is already present in the euro zone: Ireland and France.
- Commerzbank relies on Sentenial to provide its (Core and B2B) SDD service. It includes initiating R-messages after having checked on their relevance, as well as several other reject criteria set by the debtor (blocking all SDDs, blocking a creditor, a mandate or an upcoming transaction). It also includes fraud prevention and back-office reconciliation tools.
- The UK already converted almost 80% of its euro credit transfers to SCTs. RBS offer illustrates a likewise reactivity for direct debits. The SDD is only getting started in Europe (less than 0.1% migration end March 2011 according to the ECB) but it is a major concern for British financial players although implying activity outside of the sterling area. In 2007, the recently merged British processor VocaLink announced its SEPA-wide growth ambitions.
- In the euro zone, the second largest commercial German bank’s recent announcement demonstrates that SDD migration is on its way in Germany. On this very spread product (Germany processes half of the direct debits in the euro zone), Deutsche Bank was the first in 2008 to propose a service, together with Logica. The « New Commerzbank » (renamed since its merger with Dresdner Bank in 2009) is only starting to make its ambitions heard of, once the internal consolidation is acquired.
See May-June 2009 Watch