But direct debit I only know from
Germany therefore I was astonished to see that they can offer it as a service worldwide which they can't, but for Europe they can.
Wonder if that works with any bank and any account holder or if there are limitations.
Yes, but you probably know that the Bankeinzug has been discountinued over 10 years ago and that there is only SEPA Direct Debit now. It wowks with any SEPA area
bank account, frictionless. Companies do have the right to discriminate non-EU IBANs (CH, etc.) but all EU bank accounts. You can check Article 9 of the EU Regulation 260/2012.
Many other countries had direct debits before the SEPA came, just like Germany did.
In the UK, there is Bacs Direct Debit, which works pretty much the same as SEPA SEPA Direct Debit. It was also in the UK where debit direct has been invented:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit said:
Alastair Hanton, a British banker and maths graduate, found that traditional banking methods of paying in cheques were incredibly costly. His answer was to gain permission from customers to take payment directly from their bank account. After six years of campaigning, the high-street banks finally agreed in 1964. By the end of the decade, the savings made using this method meant that direct debit had come into general use in the UK.
In the US, it is called ACH debit. Where the Automated Clearing House is something like an automated check processing service, just without the paper. It is much more unregulated in the US, where many banks even offer end customers to pull money from their own accounts at other banks throug ACH. I.e. you can use Capital One to initiate a transfer of 200,000 USD from your HSBC account to Capital One. (This is not possible in the EU as SEPA direct debit is only offered to companies that register with their national authority first and obtain a number.)
Most other European countries are somewhat similar to the British / SEPA version as are explained here:
en.wikipedia.org
The article is somewhat outdated as it still lists DE, NL and IE separately, while their system has entirely been replaced by SEPA.