How to request a direct debit from a company

Hello,

I’m working with a company and I need them to pay into my business account regularly (once a month). How do I go about requesting a direct debit be set up to my account? Is there a link or form I can send them?

I asked support about this and they said it wasn’t possible…which amazed me. Surely it’s possible to set up a direct debit to a business account?

Monzo have to be a provider of business direct debits for your customer’s bank to ask Monzo to set it up. If they don’t right now, then you can’t. It could be Monzo has not fleshed out that part of the business account. Its surprising that they don’t offer it, but that’s reality.

There is a number of direct debit providers, such as https://gocardless.com/, that your business could use for direct debits in place of Monzo.

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Youd just need to ask them to set up a recurring payment or standing order on their part to pay you each month to your business bank details.

Monzo wouldn’t handle your business being set up to accept direct debit as method of payment from other entities, I believe you’d need to register for this yourself to be covered under all the terms and conditions of doing this.

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Direct Debits are not a standard part of (any, as far as I know) business bank accounts.

You could give your customer your bank details and ask them to send a monthly payment to you but, if you really need DD, then I’d probably second the recommendation for GoCardless.com, or find another DD processor.

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Thanks everyone. I think I must just be misunderstanding how direct debits work then. I assumed I would be able to send something from Monzo to the other business that they could fill in and pass to their bank in order to set up a direct debit to my account. A form or link or similar. I use GoCardless for 99% of my clients, but I have one stubborn one that refuses to use anything remotely modern. So am looking for an easy way to set up a plain old direct debit.

Can’t they just set up an old fashioned standing order if it’s for the same amount every month? Otherwise you’ll have to force them to use GoCardless. It’s not hard in 2022. They need to move with the times.

Direct debits through the bank used to be (may still be) a thing but rarely used any more - at work we used to go directly through the bank, but it was paper (postal) direct debits only, no online available (online required massive indemnity due to the fraud risk, so just wasn’t viable for a small company) and was generally a bit crap.

There are a number of brokers who will do it - gocardless is one, paypal, recurly, stripe… much easier to setup and pretty much what everyone does these days.

Yes, unless you use a third party you’d have to go through a complex and time consuming process with a sponsoring bank to get a BACS Service User Number, prove you were using BACS approved software, test your upload files, get sign-off from the bank and BACS, all before you could set up a single DD. Only worth it for larger businesses. I’ve just been through this process for one of my clients.

There are third party providers who will do this (some names above) - I haven’t worked with any of them but if you absolutely have to do DD that’s the only way to for a small business.

But if the client are so difficult and cause so much pain, I’d be tempted to ditch them if you can afford it. One thing I have learned as a freelancer is that some clients are more trouble than they are worth.

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Direct Debit as a process has a lot of rules and regulations around it due to the indemnity requirements. DDs can be recalled at the drop of a hat by the pther party upto 12 months later as an example

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The easiest way to think about it is that a standing order is a request to a bank to send money someone, a DD is a request to take money from someone.

That’s why there are many rules and indemnities surrounding the process.