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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

> in SEPA, that offer instant and irreversible settlement at zero cost.

Note that SEPA is 100% not reversible. In fact, if you look at the scheme terms is absurdly reversible. There's a 8 week no questions asked refund window, so (for instance) one could pay your mortgage with SEPA and then automatically undebit their account up to 8 weeks later.

(Don't do this unless you're happy losing your property, not financial advice).

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The customer can ask their bank anything, but the SEPA terms allow reversal for very strict scenarios, only if the payment was erroneous, it was duplicated by a human or technical errors, the wrong amount was sent etc. So the bank will refuse demands based on consumer protection reasons, they correctly fulfilled the customer request to send the money and further disputes are handled privately.

You might be referring to SEPA direct debit, which can be reversed unilaterally by the client at any point during the 8 weeks. These are payments initiated by the merchant, using an already established direct debit channel.

Yeah, I was referring to SEPA direct debit (consumer), rather than the business one which has the terms you describe in your first paragraph. Sepa consumer is a lot more common though.

What I'm saying that direct debit (the ability to authorize a merchant to draw money from your account repeatedly at a later date, for example to settle a monthly bill, comparable to giving them your credit card number) is a different payment workflow than a SEPA money transfer (initiated by the consumer), which would be presumably be used for an internet settlement protocol.

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