Background.
The word 'mandate' comes from the Latin root words 'manus dare', which directly translates to 'hand give.' The modern-day definition of a mandate is 'an official order or commission to do something.' In the banking space, this applies to accounts; by specifying who can use it, access the funds, and how.
Traditionally, these are contractual conditions settled in person at the bank and entail numerous rules and requirements. A bank account has one or more account holders. Mandates are very straightforward if only one person is operating the account and typically only involves direct debit mandates; an instruction from the customer to the bank to authorise a vendor to deduct money for scheduled debit payments for ongoing services. However, it becomes more complicated when there are authorised signatories or agents holding power of attorney involved.
Individual authorised signatories can use an account separately if the mandate specifies 'any' or 'either' authorised signatory can sign. A mandate that requires 'joint', 'both', 'all', or 'any two' authorised signatories to sign or access the account together means one authorised signatory alone cannot use the account - other authorised signatories must also approve the transactions. A bank cannot allow transactions or other activity without the consent of the other account holders.
These rules are determined by the account holders themselves and are often used for business accounts of corporate customers where mandates are granted in accordance with their roles and responsibilities. Different constraints can apply, such as amount limits, limits on the period, or a combination of both. There are also payment signing rules, where the payment is the determining factor: e.g., a payment above a certain amount is to be signed by two of the account holders, etc.
The combination of such signing mandates and payment signing rules can be very complex to manage, and in some cases, they are still paper-based and manually driven processes.
Typical problems caused by poor mandate management include:
Ineffective manual, paper-based processes.
Inconsistent data.
Higher possibility of fraud.
Ineffective outdated data that hinders proactive action.
Inefficient and ineffective compliance.
By introducing a quality mandate management solution, you will:
Reduce manual work performed by the bank and corporate employees.
Unlock new revenue channels through a corporate-centric business channel focused on corporate needs.
Promote more spending, and more transactions, resulting in more revenue.
Better protect the buyer and the seller.
Sybrin's Mandate Management.
As part of our Payments Hub, we can provide mandate management to central banks, retail banks, corporates, and service providers.
Central Mandate Solution.
Sybrin developed a central mandate solution used by central banks in Africa - similar to the DebiCheck solution currently used in South Africa. This solution would typically be deployed with the central clearing house and provide the following functionalities.
Master record of mandate information.
As captured by participating banks, mandate information is recorded with an image of the signed paper mandate form in a document management system. This central mandate solution is the single source of truth for all participating banks.
Facilitate communication.
The central solution provides interfaces (web, API, or FAT client) that can be used by:
The customer's bank to exchange mandate information and process transaction flows to the central solution.
The corporate (service provider) exchanges mandate information and processes transaction flows to the customer's bank.
Validation of the mandate information.
Some information is auto validated, while manual review screens are available for a person to view the image of the signed mandate form and validate the captured data.
Manage various mandates process flows.
New mandate flow.
Amend existing mandate flow.
Cancel a mandate.
Mandate Solution for the Bank.
Manage integration into central solutions.
DebiCheck (South Africa). The Sybrin mandate solution manages integration into the South African national DebiCheck initiative.
Clearing Houses mentioned earlier have implemented Sybrin's Central Mandate Solution.
The Sybrin solution can be extended using our low-code platform to support any centralised solution.
Mandate capture.
Capturing a mandate is supported as follows:
Paper: The solution includes imaging device integration, like scanners and UI screens, where a user can validate and capture the details on the scanned form.
Electronic via mobile app or online web form: The Sybrin low-code platform allows for customising both the web and app forms without low-level coders.
Integration to systems, like host banking, is available for customer verification, lookup, and enrichment of additional information.
Master record of mandate information.
Provide a local master record of mandate information if no centralised solution is available.
Amend existing mandate.
Manage the mandate amendment process according to business rules of the bank or centralised solution.
Mandate approval.
New mandates and amendments of existing mandates to be approved:
Customer approval can be achieved by:
DebiCheck (South Africa) TT1, TT2, and TT3 integrations are supported.
DebiCheck will soon replace authenticated Early Debit Orders (AEDO), but until then, Sybrin's solution supports AEDO CARD PIN approval.
Approval via other channels USSD, App, and Web. Supported additional identity mechanisms like biometrics supported via third parties.
Approval received per signed paper form. Auto signature recognition is supported via third-party libraries.
Back-office approval by bank staff:
In some business processes, a manual approval form is required (maker checker) to approve new or amended mandates. The Sybrin solution includes customisable UI screens for approval purposes.
Low-code platform.
The Sybrin low-code platform allows traditional programmers, citizen developers and business analysts to customise all aspects of the mandate solution, including:
Business processes according to the Business Process Mapping Notation (BPMN) standard. The drag-and-drop visual editor allows for quick, intuitive changes.
Business rules are supported via Data Model and Notation (DMN) visual editors.
User interfaces can be modified using visual interfaces with easy-to-use drag-and-drop components.
Data relationships can be modified as required.
The Payments Hub includes several pre-built integrations, and new integrations can be configured for standards like SOAP and REST.
Mandate Solution for Corporates and Service Providers.
Sybrin has a payments solution for corporate-to-bank and service-provider-to-bank that include features such as:
Quick and easy onboarding of corporates.
Onboarding of a corporate includes capturing of registration information and documentation, payment limits, bank accounts, notification team, account linking, and charges and commissions.
Off-the-shelf payment processes customised for corporates and service providers.
SWIFT Single and bulk EFT Real-time payments Debit order and mandates Bill payments
This includes a mandate module with features such as:
Capturing of mandates.
Paper: Our solution includes imaging device integration, like scanners and UI screens where a user can validate and capture the details on the scanned form.
Electronic via mobile app or online web form: The Sybrin low-code platform allows for customising both the web and app forms without low-level coders.
Integration to systems, like host banking, is available for customer verification, lookup, and enrichment of additional information.
For more information about our Payments Hub solution, click here