31 October 2021 saw years of blood, sweat and tears culminate in a major milestone in the fight against debit order abuse. As the final implementation milestone for the single largest and most complex ISO 20022 project in South Africa to date, it also signifies an important payment modernisation achievement.
From November 2021 onwards, the Authenticated Collections (AC) and supporting Registered Mandate Service (RMS) will mature in a well-structured debits ecology, with only AC – more commonly known as DebiCheck – and Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT) permitted in the South African national payment system.
The introduction of the DebiCheck solution is a world-first and a significant achievement for the South African payments industry. Key milestones of the project include:
- Jul 2017: Core AC functionality in production
- Oct 2018: Full AC functionality in production
- Apr 2019: Migration live in production
- Sep 2020: RMS live in production and PCH rules signed off
- May 2021: AC and RMS technically stable and no new mandate initiation in NAEDO and AEDO
- Jul 2021: Majority of Users onboarded
- Oct 2021: Migration from AEDO and NAEDO collections to AC completed and AEDO and NAEDO sunset
The Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) thanks each of the many payment industry stakeholders that dedicated their time, effort and expertise to the DebiCheck project. The industry support has been instrumental in helping PASA to meet its directive from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to combat debit order abuse.