What is Direct Debit Facilities Management?

Direct Debit payments for businesses across the UK are growing steadily, driven by their reliability and cost-effectiveness. Operated through a long-established, trusted and reliable payment channel, the Bacs Scheme, Direct Debits are simple to implement in your payment process. 

The benefits of Direct Debits are widespread. They are still by far the most cost-effective way to collect payments in the UK. Over the past 12 months, 4,896,016 direct debits were processed, marking a 2% increase in volume between September 2023 and September 2024.

With the Office of Budget Responsibility predicting the UK economy will grow by around 2% through 2025, businesses are looking for efficient ways to sign up more customers to regular payments for their goods and services.

Enterprises focusing on expansion will likely need support from experienced providers who can deliver consistent, secure and seamless payment collection services. 

To access Direct Debit services, your business must obtain sponsorship from your bank. This process qualifies your business and your Direct Debit collection process to ensure it meets the bank's requirements for risk purposes. Should your bank reject you in this process, there is still the option to go through an accredited Direct Debit Facilities Management provider.

An accredited Direct Debit Facilities Management provider will assume the associated risk on your behalf when providing a Direct Debit facility to your business. It will also offer hands-on support to take you through this journey.

Interbacs, a long-standing Direct Debit Solution provider, does exactly this. This is coupled with the provision of Direct Debit management software, making it an efficient service that significantly reduces the administrative burden. 

Direct Debit Facilities Management services have numerous benefits for organisations, including cost efficiencies and increased productivity. Here we explore exactly what is a Direct Debit Facilities Management service and how it can streamline your business operations. 

Contents

• What is Direct Debit Facilities Management?
• Key benefits of Direct Debit Facilities Management. 
• Why choose Interbacs Direct Debit Facilities Management?

What is Direct Debit facilities management?

A Direct Debit Facilities Management service enables eligible businesses to collect direct debit payments through them. It streamlines payment administration and oversees your Direct Debit collection process so that your organisation is not weighed down with the operational burden of managing payments. This type of service is particularly useful if your business doesn’t have its own Service User Number, as it allows you to operate using the provider’s SUN. 

As a result, your customers can pay regularly or occasionally for your goods and services using a convenient and simple payment method without your business being sponsored into the Direct Debit scheme by your Payment Services Provider (PSP). 

An experienced Direct Debit Facilities Management service will be able to manage, maintain, and secure your Direct Debit payments using their specifically designed systems to ensure data protection and payment accuracy. 

You can avoid all the hassle of filing a paper mandate and instead collect customer information to set up Direct Debit payments by using an online signup Direct Debit mandate process. Once your customer has filled out their information online, it is shared promptly and securely with your Direct Debit Facilities Management provider.

Your service provider will submit this customer information to Bacs to lodge this mandate, along with the agreed payment amount and the date the payment will be taken from the customer’s account. Once this payment is organised, the payment will be collected on the set date, and your business account will be credited with the payment amount. 

Key benefits of Direct Debit Facilities Management 

Your Direct Debit Facilities Management team will work closely with you to simplify your payment processes and support you to grow your business with convenient payment methods your customers prefer. 

There are several key benefits to your business from partnering with a Direct Debit Facilities Management provider, including: 

• 1. Reduced financial burden

Managing Bacs payments in-house may lead to increased costs, as more complicated systems and solutions need to be put in place. What's more, hiring an individual to manage this process is another cost many businesses quite often forget to factor in. Handing this operation over to an experienced Direct Debit Facilities Management provider ensures that your payments are collected on time and information is kept up to date, resulting in considerable time and money savings.  

    2. Rapid payment automation 

Automation streamlines transactions, minimises human error, and ensures customer information is accurate and up to date. This helps to minimise customer dissatisfaction when payments are taken by mistake, which is more likely to happen without an automated process. In order to implement an automated payment collection process, apart from the financial burden, organisations will have to take their time to ensure systems are implemented correctly and tested and trialled until it is working to achieve the desired effect. To work with a Direct Debit Facilities Management provider, you plug in their system, and you are ready to go. 

•    3. Improved financial forecasting

With a more predictable and consistent cash flow within your organisation due to the implementation of Direct Debit systems, you will be able to rigorously forecast for the near and longer term. Real-time payment data allows for precise forecasting, fostering confidence and consistency in achieving your objectives.  What's more, you will be able to pay close attention to your payment collection process scientifically and address issues timely to improve performance. 

Why choose Interbacs Direct Debit Facilities Management?

If you’re wondering what Direct Debit facilities management is and how it can support your growing business, then our Direct Debit managed service team are on hand with the expertise to guide you through your journey. 

With Interbacs' accredited Direct Debit Facilities Management service, all of your administration and monitoring processes are managed by our professionally qualified Bacs team, enabling your business to stride along faster in your growth journey.

Our Bacs-accredited Direct Debit Facilities Management service supports businesses of all sizes, including start-ups, SMEs and large corporations requiring tailored solutions. 

You can quickly gain access to the Direct Debits payment channel to help streamline your payment collection process without the administrative and financial burden of having to manage it in-house.

Ready to make the switch? Contact Interbacs today for a personalised consultation and discover how we can optimise your direct debit processes.