What does a failed direct debit really cost you?
A reversal is a direct debit that gets pulled back. Money you already saw on your account leaves it again. That happens with insufficient funds, a withdrawn mandate, a closed account, or simply because your member presses the button at the bank to have the payment reversed.
Most owners know the fee their bank or payment provider charges for it and think they therefore know the cost. In practice that fee is the smallest part of the bill. In this piece we walk through the three layers: what you pay directly, what it costs in time and what it costs you in members.
In short
- The direct costs are your payment provider's fee plus whatever your system charges per reversal. At REQUR the latter is €0.20.
- The biggest item is time: working out what happened, making contact, sending a payment link, checking whether it arrives after all.
- A consumer may have a SEPA direct debit reversed for up to eight weeks with no reason given, so a reversal can still arrive weeks later.
- Reversals are an early signal for cancellations; owners who act quickly keep more members.
Layer one: what you pay directly
There are usually two amounts on a failed collection. Your payment provider or bank charges a fee for the reversal, and your member system charges an amount for processing it. At REQUR that second amount is €0.20, the same as an ordinary collection, and it sits on the pricing page.
At many suppliers that second amount appears nowhere. Ask about it explicitly, and follow up with whether a second collection attempt is charged again. At a five percent reversal rate and 400 members you are looking at twenty cases a month, and then the difference between €0.20 and a euro starts to count.
Layer two: the time it eats
This is the item nobody sees on an invoice and which is still the most expensive. Per reversal somebody has to work out who it is, whether it is an incident or a pattern, make contact, send a payment link and check later whether payment came in after all.
Do the sums yourself: if that takes ten minutes on average and you have twenty cases a month, you lose more than three hours a month to one task that adds nothing to what you offer. Over a year that is almost five working days.
This is exactly the part to automate. A system that re-collects by itself, sends a payment link by itself and only shows you what is still stuck removes most of those hours.
Layer three: the members who leave afterwards
A reversal is rarely only a payment problem. It is often the first visible sign that somebody is drifting away: showing up less, engaging less, and then a collection that bounces back.
How you respond to that first reversal often decides whether somebody stays. A short, friendly sequence with a payment link works better than a stern demand three weeks later, because by then the member feels there is a debt, and that is an easy reason to stop altogether.
Why a reversal can still arrive weeks later
With an ordinary European direct debit a consumer may have the amount reversed up to eight weeks after it was taken, with no reason required. Where there was no valid mandate at all, that window is considerably longer.
That means this month's revenue is only truly settled two months from now. Allow for that in your numbers: look not only at what was collected, but at what survived the reversal window. A system that links reversals to the original invoice makes that difference visible.
Frequently asked questions
€0.20 per reversal, the same as an ordinary collection, and it sits on the pricing page alongside €0.20 for iDEAL and €0.07 for card payments. Whatever your bank or payment provider charges on top depends on that party.
With a European direct debit a consumer may ask for their money back up to eight weeks after it was taken, with no reason required. For a collection with no valid mandate behind it, a considerably longer window applies. Ask your bank about the exact terms that apply to your contract.
Yes. In REQUR a failed collection is presented again automatically and you see what is still outstanding in one overview, including the reason for the reversal. You only have to look at the cases that stay stuck.
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