[lxgr]

> [...] the merchant has access to the information to take money from my account. But that information can leak and someone else can take money from my account.

Not in the implementation where any new merchant (or even new mandate reference of the same merchant, e.g. for two Netflix subscriptions pulling from the same account) has to be positively confirmed, which is possible in SEPA as I've described.

This is possible because, unlike cards, SEPA has no payment guarantee/chargeback protection at all. Otherwise, you'd indeed need some way of positively approving new recurring payment mandates.