You will have the power to cancel your debit orders once and for all at your bank from June next year.
After pressure from Personal Finance, the Banking Council decided earlier this year that you should be able to cancel a debit order by simply notifying your bank without having to contact the company in whose favour the debit order is drawn.
At a recent meeting of the Banking Council board, June 30 2001 was set as the deadline by which the change in the banking system must take place.
Many bank account holders have experienced extreme frustration with debit orders that continue to be deducted from their accounts against their wishes either because of a dispute with a company over payment or because of dishonest operators who use the debit order authority signed by you as carte blanche to raid your account.
The view of the banks is that a debit order is a contract between you and a company, and if you wish to cancel it you must instruct the company concerned to do so.
The banks have said that although spot checks are carried out to establish whether you have authorised a company to deduct money from your account, the volume of debit orders passing through the system makes it impossible to check each one.
Although you can reverse a debit order transaction, unscrupulous companies can continue to dip into your account by changing the debit amount, and the banks' computers will treat this as a new debit order and process it.
When debit orders work properly, they are an efficient means of paying regular accounts that vary in amount. But, unlike stop orders - where you alone control the money that leaves your account but which can only be drawn on fixed amounts - the terms of a debit order are often so loosely worded that an unscrupulous company can raid your account at will.
Updating Personal Finance on the developments concerning debit orders, Bob Tucker, head of the Banking Council, says the implications of the board's decision are twofold.
Bank computer systems will have to be adjusted, and industries that make use of debit orders, such as the life assurance industry - which collects millions of rands via the debit order system each month - will have to accept the change.
Until the new systems are in place, you would be wise to think carefully before giving a company the authority to draw money from your account. Rather pay your accounts by direct transfer through an automatic teller machine or the internet.