A debit order is an instruction or agreement between you and a supplier, to allow payment directly from your bank account.
Recently, more South Africans have lodged complaints to their banks regarding unauthorised debit orders being made on their accounts. According to statistics, there are currently about one million disputes a month. This is why banks have created simple avenues for consumers to dispute a debit order in South Africa.
How to dispute a debit order in South Africa:
Banks will ask you, the customer, to verify new debit orders on your account, to ensure that they are authentic.
South African banks will, in future, ensure that debit orders on your bank account are within the parameters that you agreed to.
By law, all new debit orders must be authenticated electronically.
If there is a unauthorised debit order on your bank account, you can dispute it with your bank. But before you do this, you need to try to resolve the dispute with the supplier that debited your account.
You first need to try to contact the supplier that debited your account and if you can prove that you did not authorise any debit orders, you can then approach your bank. Your bank is likely to want to see proof that the debit order is illegitimate, so you need to gather as much proof as possible.
Banks have introduced authentication as a way to curb illegitimate debit orders. Authentication will go a long way towards ensuring that consumers know who is debiting their bank account, when they will debit it and how much will be debited. This will protect consumers as well as the banks from fraudulent debit orders. This will also curb consumers from making illegitimate claims of unknown debit orders and reversing debit order payments –even when they are legitimate.
