Direct debit with Mollie

Direct debit is the reason subscriptions work: you debit the amount yourself, instead of waiting for your customer to pay an invoice. Mollie makes that possible in the Netherlands and the rest of the SEPA area. But Mollie provides the payment infrastructure, not the subscription management around it, and that difference determines how much work you have to do yourself.

What is direct debit via Mollie?

Direct debit via Mollie is a SEPA direct debit carried out by Mollie on the basis of permission your customer has given. In practice that means:

• The collection runs under Mollie's direct debit agreement. You need no direct debit agreement with your bank and no creditor ID of your own, which saves an application process of weeks.
• You need the customer's permission before you may debit. The more firmly you record it, the better your position if a debit is disputed.
• A debit is not final. For consumers there is a refund period of 8 weeks during which the customer can have the amount reversed without giving a reason. For a debit without a valid mandate, that period extends to 13 months.

Those last two points are exactly why direct debit is more than a single API call: you have to record mandates and follow up on failed debits.

How to get permission to debit

There are two routes, and they are not legally equivalent. That difference is important enough to know before you choose.

1. Through a first online payment. The customer pays once via iDEAL, Bancontact or credit card. Based on that first payment, Mollie records an authorisation, which lets you keep collecting via SEPA direct debit without the customer having to do anything more. This is the standard route and by far the easiest, because the customer chooses their own bank and you never have to retype an IBAN.

Be aware of what it is not, though: an iDEAL payment is not a signed SEPA mandate. It is an authorisation within your payment service provider's system, not a formal authorisation in the sense of the SEPA rules. In practice that means you cannot produce a signed mandate in a dispute, and your customer effectively keeps the full right of reversal. Almost everyone who collects through a payment service provider works this way, but do not count on evidential weight you do not have.

2. Through a signed authorisation. If the customer signs on paper or through a form, you do have a formal authorisation. In RCUR, from the Advanced plan you can add an IBAN manually and put the customer straight into a subscription, without a first online payment. Keep the signed form in order: it is the only thing you can produce if a debit is disputed.

The formal requirements, validity period and refund periods are covered on the SEPA direct debit mandate.

What Mollie does not do itself

Mollie gives you the building blocks: customers, mandates, recurring payments and a subscriptions endpoint. What is not included is the work around it:

• Subscriptions with multiple lines or different amounts on one customer
• Automatically retrying after a failed debit, and contacting the customer if it fails again
• Invoices that run along with every collection run
• Applying price changes across your entire customer base
• A customer overview that non-technical colleagues can work with

If you only use Mollie, you build that yourself, or do it by hand in a spreadsheet. That works fine for roughly the first few dozen customers and not after that.

Setting up direct debit via Mollie with RCUR

RCUR is a Mollie Gold Partner and fills in exactly that layer. Setting up takes an afternoon:

1. Connect your Mollie account to RCUR. Your collections keep running through your own Mollie account, and your payouts simply arrive in your own account.
2. Create a subscription. Decide the amount and frequency. With subscription lines you can put multiple amounts on one subscription, for example a fixed monthly price plus a variable usage fee.
3. Send a payment link. The customer pays the first instalment, which records the authorisation for the follow-up debits. You can email the link from RCUR, put it in your own email, or let the customer open it from your website. The payment screen carries your own logo and colours.
4. Let it run. From that moment on, collection happens automatically, failed payments are followed up and the matching invoices go out.

Following up failed direct debits

Some of your direct debits will always fail: insufficient balance, a closed account, a chargeback. That is normal; the problem is what happens next. Chasing chargebacks by hand is work that costs you hours and that you let slip the fastest.

RCUR automatically retries a failed SEPA debit, or sends the customer a payment link so they can still pay. You can set the wording of those reminders yourself with email templates, so the tone suits your business. That way, a failed debit loses you neither a customer nor revenue.

Sending invoices automatically

Collecting without an invoice throws your bookkeeping off. That is why RCUR integrates with Moneybird, Exact Online, WeFact, e-Boekhouden, HostFact and Teamleader: with every collection run, the matching invoice is created and sent automatically. For anything outside those, there is a public API and a Zapier integration.

What it costs

You pay two things: Mollie's transaction fees, and a subscription to RCUR. That subscription starts at € 10 per month; manual IBAN entry comes with Advanced (€ 15) and automatic follow-ups with Expert (€ 24). Accounting integrations and API access are in Professional (€ 35).

An important difference from many other subscription tools: RCUR charges no fee per transaction and no percentage of your revenue. Your bill therefore stays the same as you grow. You can try it free for 7 days, no credit card required.