The whole system seems to be designed in such a bad way and relies on a bunch of heuristics and insurance to make up for easy fraud.
Why is it that to pay for something you give the seller the keys to your account and they go in and withdraw the money they want instead of the seller sending you a request and you accepting to send the requested money..
Another plus side of your suggestion is it now becomes trivial to cancel any subscriptions since you can simply stop allowing the payment to go through rather than getting the seller to stop taking your money.
I'm still wondering why there is no electronic SEPA mandate. When you want to authorize e.g. for your landlord to be allowed to withdraw rent payments from your account the landlord has to physically mail you a SEPA mandate which you have to sign and mail to your bank.
This may sound like a slightly obsolete but otherwise well thought out system until you notice that revoking the SEPA mandate requires you to contact the vendor first which is kind of silly.
> I'm still wondering why there is no electronic SEPA mandate.
There is! Nothing forces vendors to collect a paper form and signature. I know some countries still love paper trails (hello Germany) but even there, you'll find some businesses that don't do it. When I lived in Berlin and signed up for my broadband with 1&1, I just had to copy/paste my IBAN into their online form.
> physically mail you a SEPA mandate which you have to sign and mail to your bank.
Nope. The bank is not involved at this stage. Banks authorize direct debits by default, they don't need to know about the mandate beforehand.
> revoking the SEPA mandate requires you to contact the vendor first which is kind of silly.
It's not. It leaves the responsibility with the contracting parties, and keep banks as a neutral medium. That said, as a customer, you can revert a direct debit with a single click, and permanently reject further direct debits. It doesn't have any effect on your contract (and the vendor will send it to debt collection if it believes you're in the wrong), but you keep full control.
By the way, you can build a fully digitized billing system on top of that (there's SEPAmail in France for instance), and more and more banks support instant payments, which I assume can be used to improve the scheme.
Why is it that to pay for something you give the seller the keys to your account and they go in and withdraw the money they want instead of the seller sending you a request and you accepting to send the requested money..
Another plus side of your suggestion is it now becomes trivial to cancel any subscriptions since you can simply stop allowing the payment to go through rather than getting the seller to stop taking your money.