Update: Sofortüberweisung no longer available as a payment method
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We aim to offer you a consistently positive experience when using our services. Therefore, we have decided to no longer offer Sofortüberweisung (an instant bank transfer service by Sofort GmbH) as a means of payment with immediate effect (as of mid-October 2020). We would like to explain why this is a necessary step for us in the following article.
Attempted fraud
We have noticed an increase in fraud attempts on our platform via Sofortüberweisung (an instant bank transfer service). When you order via Sofortüberweisung, the Sofort GmbH sends merchants a confirmation that the transfer will happen. The merchants then send the goods to the customer. The money, only arrives later, like in a regular bank transfer. However, it is possible that this confirmation is sent to us even though the remitter is not solvent. Therefore, if we release the credit after a confirmation by Sofort, we may credit money that we will never receive.
Unfortunately, the numbers clearly speak for themselves. Of all our payment methods, the Sofortüberweisung is the one that fails most often. More than 27% of the total amount of money sent via Sofortüberweisung this year did not go through.
Therefore, we only have the choice to release the credit only after we have received the money. Since these are far from being isolated cases, the effort of a follow-up is too high. With the release of your credit on receipt of payment, unfortunately, all the advantages of the Sofortüberweisung vanish. Offering this payment method therefore means additional work, which costs us time and offers you no noticeable added value. We would rather invest this time to improve our services for you.
Many equivalent alternatives
Due to the time delay that we need to adopt with Sofortüberweisung, it follows that other payment methods are ultimately equivalent or more recommendable for you. We still offer payment via credit card, regular bank transfer, real-time bank transfer (so-called “Echtzeitüberweisung”), PayPal, direct debit and various crypto currencies.
If you pay via credit card, real-time bank transfer, PayPal or with crypto currencies, your order will usually be executed immediately. This also applies to the direct debit procedure if you have already issued and activated the SEPA Direct Debit Mandate. We have summarized detailed information on how to top up your credit balance on our help pages.
If you have deposited a credit card or issued a SEPA Direct Debit Mandate, you can also have your credit automatically topped up as soon as it falls below a value defined by you. Alternatively, you can have an invoice sent to you for the amount to be topped up as soon as the credit falls below the specified value. In this specific case the amount will be credited once we have received the payment.
About real time bank transfer
At this point we would like to pay special attention to the real-time transfer (Echtzeitüberweisung), because it is very similar to the instant transfer (Sofortüberweisung). The great advantage of the real-time transfer is that it is executed within a few seconds. The decisive difference to the instant bank transfer is that the transfer does not have to take a detour via a third party provider. For you this means that your payment will go through immediately. Furthermore, you do not have to give your bank details to a third party company. Instead, the payment is processed directly by your bank. Depending on your bank institute, fees for a real-time bank transfer may be incurred.
Low demand
After all, Sofortüberweisung has long been the least frequently used payment method by our customers. Last year 2019, payments via Sofortüberweisung accounted for only 1.7% of total revenue. The low demand could be due, among other things, to the fact that customers are reluctant to disclose their bank details to third parties. In any case, the low demand shows us that our customers prefer other payment methods.
The combination of these reasons led us to conclude that it makes sense to switch off Sofortüberweisung as a payment method for our services.
We hope that those of you who have used Sofortüberweisung so far will be fine with using one of the other payment methods.
If you have any questions about our payment methods, please contact us at support@seven.io.
Best regards
Source of header picture: iStock/Cecilie_Arcurs