Debit Orders

What Types of Debit Order Mandates Are There?

Compare paper, voice, electronic, DebiCheck and registered mandates, and learn which mandate type is right for your collections and dispute risk.

A debit order mandate can be captured and evidenced in several ways, and it can be processed through different collection systems. Both choices matter: how the mandate is captured determines what evidence you hold, and which system it runs on determines how resistant the collection is to disputes.

This page looks at the two dimensions separately — the form of the mandate, and the system the mandate is processed through — and then compares them.

What forms can a mandate take?

Paper mandate – the customer signs a physical form. Simple and familiar, but slow to capture, easy to lose and harder to match to electronic collections at scale.
Voice mandate – the customer gives authority in a recorded telephone call. Common in outbound sales; the recording is the evidence, so call quality, script wording and storage matter.
Electronic mandate – the customer accepts the mandate terms online or in an app. The platform records the acceptance with an audit trail: date and time, mandate wording, device and IP information. This is the most practical form for digital onboarding, provided the acceptance is clear and unambiguous.

Whatever the form, the mandate must meet the same content standard — see Minimum Mandate Requirements.

Which system processes the mandate?

EFT mandate – the mandate is held by the service provider only. The customer's bank has no record of it and relies on the collector's assurance that it exists. See EFT Debit Orders.
DebiCheck mandate – the mandate is electronically confirmed by the customer with their own bank before the first collection, using their banking app, USSD or ATM. Once authenticated, the bank holds a record of the approved terms. See How DebiCheck Works.
Registered mandate (RMS) – the mandate is registered with the banks through the Registered Mandate Service but is not authenticated by the customer. It collects in the early processing window, at second priority to authenticated DebiCheck collections. See What Is a Registered Mandate?.

How do the mandate types compare?

	EFT mandate	Registered mandate (RMS)	DebiCheck mandate
Held at the customer's bank	No	Registered	Registered and authenticated
Customer confirms with their bank	No	No	Yes
Early processing window	No	Yes, second priority	Yes, first priority
Tracking of failed collections	No	Yes	Yes
Dispute resistance	Lowest	Moderate	Highest
Relative cost	Lowest	Moderate	Highest
Typical use	Reliable payers, low-value billing	Books needing tracking without authentication friction	Credit agreements, high-risk collections

Which mandate type should you choose?

The service provider chooses the system — consumers cannot — so the decision comes down to the economics of your book:

Use EFT mandates where customers pay reliably and cost per collection matters most.
Use registered mandates where you want early-window collection and tracking, but authentication would add too much friction at onboarding.
Use DebiCheck mandates where certainty of recovery matters, disputes are likely, or the collections relate to credit agreements.

Many businesses mix all three, moving customers between mandate types as their payment behaviour changes. Kwik supports EFT, DebiCheck and registered mandate collections on one platform, so a single customer relationship can move to a stronger mandate type without re-onboarding.

What about NAEDO and AEDO mandates?

NAEDO and AEDO were the earlier tracking-based debit order services, replaced by DebiCheck and RMS under the Authenticated Collections project. Existing mandates were migrated rather than cancelled — see What Happened to NAEDO and AEDO?.

Debit Order Mandates

Understand what a debit order mandate is, why it is legally required before collecting, and what happens if you collect without a valid mandate.

Action Dates and Cycles