In the European Union, and particularly in Spain, novel payment methods have been developed and adopted with remarkable speed—Bizum being a prime example—replacing older systems as soon as more efficient ones emerge. We have nothing to envy other regions like North America, which has sidelined common methods in our culture, such as direct debits, while holding onto instruments that are practically extinct in the Old Continent, like paper checks.

Direct debit was and remains one of the most popular payment methods in Spain for automatically handling everything from taxes to recurring bills like utilities and insurance policies. It allowed us to “forget” about manual payments and strike the “payment schedule” from our lives. This works perfectly as long as there is certainty that the account holds enough funds; this is why many debits hit at the start of the month, when “fresh money” from payroll has theoretically just arrived.

The New Worker Doesn’t Get Paid on the 1st: The System Doesn’t Know It Yet

This is the traditional view of our economy, but what is happening with increasing frequency? More and more workers are being paid per project or activity on indeterminate dates, making it difficult to predict when funds will be available. As a result, failed payments have increased significantly, creating costs for everyone involved.

This is why it is particularly curious that a payment method with an existing track record has not yet gained significant traction: Request to Pay (R2P), which is, in a sense, the modern alternative to direct debit.

Request to Pay: Paying When You Can, Not When You’re Charged

Request to Pay was created to add flexibility to the payment system. Instead of an automatic pull, the system asks the payer if they can or how they want to pay. This reduces failures and, crucially, once a payment is accepted, it cannot be charged back.

With the flexibility it offers the payer, this method could even solve the “bottleneck” of low direct debit adoption in markets like the U.S., where users flatly reject the idea of “someone or something” having automatic access to their accounts.

The Barriers Holding It Back

Despite the apparent advantages, the method hasn’t taken off. Possible reasons include:

• Lack of Network Effect: A critical mass has not yet been reached for the market to grasp its real value.
• Competition: Methods like Bizum offer stiff competition; in fact, R2P is often colloquially referred to as a “reverse Bizum.”
• Unclear Benefits: Value propositions aren’t yet clearly identified for all stakeholders: banks, customers, and operators.
• Upfront Investment: Significant technical, procedural, and security implementation is required.

Profit Sharing: The Key to Unlocking Change

Addressing these issues could accelerate adoption, but the distribution of benefits among all parties must be clarified. To take an example from the past: over 30 years ago, the insurance market pushed for direct debits. However, this met resistance from insurance agents who preferred to collect payments personally to manage the “float” for financial gain before remitting it to the company. That resistance was overcome by offering a 2% commission bonus on direct-debit receipts. In the end, everyone won.

There is much to discuss on this topic, but our goal today is to open a healthy debate on this way of operating payments.