I don't doubt there is some SEPA fraud but 'huge amount' is something that requires some proof. Personally I haven't seen a single instance and that's with all of my banking details public and many thousands of transactions per year across 10 different bank accounts (three companies, and a bunch of private accounts).

The article misrepresents how direct debit works. Just having your bank details is absolutely not enough to initiate a transfer: the user must confirm it by issuing so called direct debit mandate. This mandate usually has a limit on the amount, and can be revoked at any time. Also, the business faces penalties for repeated failed transfers.

The point is that SEPA direct debits are revokable. And by revokable, I mean they are revokable up to 13 months after a transaction. How easily it is depends on your bank : on some banks you need to send a paper letter, on one of my banks, you need to contact the customer service, on the other, reversing a SEPA debit can be done with a simple button on my web interface.

SEPA push, whose are, by definition, manual actions from yourself via the web interface of your bank are not reversible. But that’s probably not the most frictionless method so it’s rarely used other than people to people transactions, between your own bank accounts, or for really big purchases like buying a car.

Yeah that confused me about the article. I've never heard of SEPA direct debit fraud, as my understanding is that SDD requires a notification to be sent before any debit is initiated to give time to the user to block it.

It surely can be an issue but I'm not familiar with people refusing to share their IBAN number because they're afraid of random charges, which is a thing for ACH numbers.