UK Direct Debit Bureau SmartDebit Reduces Fees for Charities

LONDON, June 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

SmartDebit launches a discount for its Direct Debit and Direct Credit services to charities.

A 5% fee discount has been applied to its services for charities and not-for-profit organisations. SmartDebit's Managing Director, Terry Jones, said, "Charities are one of our key markets and we wanted to show our commitment by reducing fees.  Whilst we had donated to charities regularly over the years, a standard discount allows us to spread goodwill equally and has been well received by the market." 

In addition to the fee discount, the majority of the SmartDebit Direct Debit service is classified by HMRC as Exempt Supply for our eligible charitable customers." Jones continued, "Being a designated Exempt Supply means that eligible charities free up valuable funds." 

SmartDebit informed existing eligible charity customers that VAT would no longer be charged and in addition, we refunded VAT that had been incurred on what is now exempt supply invoices for four previous years of service from point of exemption being granted.  Jones said, "It was tremendous to make our charity customers aware, and with the added bonus that VAT could be refunded."

SmartDebit has established itself as a major player in the charity market, processing for more than 700 charities. Jones said, "We have a good spread of charity customers of all sizes. Our continued investment in processes, robust systems, resiliency and customer service and strong governance have proved successful."  

The company is launching the latest release of its SmartDebit Online (SDO) service, the hosted service for online giving. Mark Hargrave, the company's Chief Information Officer, said, "We've been successfully signing up donors online for years with SDO. This latest generation will shorten the time of the sign-up process and is a seamless interface with charities' websites, with minimal data required on a single page." 

The company has also launched a further product, SmartDebit Sign-up (SDS) to improve conversion success rate to Direct Debit.  Hargrave said, "We can even take data and pre-populate the page, allowing a very quick, simple and efficient sign-up experience."

SmartDebit is one of only four businesses accredited by Bacs to train organisations.

The company plans further announcements for charities before the year's end.

About SmartDebit 

Payment Solutions Ltd trading as SmartDebit^® is the UK's leading Direct Debit Bureau (Bureau no. B08032), specialising in payment processing on behalf of businesses, not-for-profits and the public sector since 1998.

Payment Solutions Ltd trading as SmartDebit^® is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the Payment Services Regulations 2009 (registration no. 612857), a Bacs Approved Bureau, ISO 27001:2013 Certified and adheres to PCI DSS Level 1 standards.

For more information, please email Charity@SmartDebit.co.uk.  Visit the website http://www.SmartDebit.co.uk