Collect Payments#
GoCardless specialises in bank payments, offering flexible solutions for both recurring and one-off payments. Whether you're collecting subscription fees, taking one-time purchases, or setting up payment plans, we provide the tools to accept payments directly from your customers' bank accounts.
Before you start building, there are two things to decide: which payment type fits your use case, and how you want to integrate.
1. What payment type(s) do you need?#
| Payment Type | How it Works | Best For | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-off Direct Debit | Highly flexible — collect payments on an ad-hoc basis with varying amounts, frequency, and/or timing as agreed with the customer. | Usage-based billing, invoices, variable charges | All schemes (Bacs, SEPA, ACH, BECS, PAD, Autogiro, Betalingsservice, PayTo) |
| Subscriptions | Fixed amount collected automatically at regular intervals. | Subscriptions, memberships, SaaS | All schemes |
| Instalments | Fixed number of payments spreading the cost of a purchase. | Payment plans, tuition, high-ticket items | All schemes |
| Pay By Bank | One-off payment confirmed within seconds via the customer's banking app — no mandate required. | E-commerce checkouts, time-sensitive or high-value one-off payments | GBP (Faster Payments), EUR (SEPA Instant) |
| Instant + Direct Debit | Immediate instant upfront payment via the customer's bank app, plus a Direct Debit setup for future recurring payments. | Services needing immediate activation + ongoing billing | GBP (Faster Payments + Bacs), EUR (SEPA Instant + SEPA DD) |
| Variable Recurring Payments (Pay By Bank) | Recurring variable payments via open banking consent. A mandate is required once; merchants can then take future recurring payments and an instant upfront payment. | Sweeping between accounts, loan repayments, investment top-ups | GBP only — restricted to a limited group of sectors |
2. How do you want to integrate?#
The simplest way to create any payment is with a Billing Request. A Billing Request brings all the parts of a payment together — the customer, their authorisation, their bank details, and the payment details — into a single, manageable object.
All three approaches below are powered by the same underlying Billing Requests API.
| Hosted Payment Pages | Drop-in Flow (JavaScript) | Custom Payment Pages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| API | Billing Request Flows | Billing Request Flows | Billing Requests |
| Integration effort | Minimal — redirect to GoCardless | Moderate — embed our JS component | Significant — build from scratch |
| Hosting | GoCardless-hosted page | Stays on your site | Fully integrated into your product |
| UI | GoCardless Checkout | Embedded component | Your own UI |
| Customisation | Low — logo and company name only | Medium — styling to match your brand | Full — complete control |
| Payment types | All | Direct Debit only | All |
| Mobile responsive | ✓ | ✓ | You build it |
| Multi-language support | ✓ | ✓ | You build it |
| Scheme-appropriate flows | ✓ | ✓ | You build it |
| Compliance handled | ✓ | ✓ | You build it, we check it |
| Customer stays on your domain | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Understanding bank payments#
Direct Debit vs Pay By Bank#
Most payment types use Direct Debit: the customer sets up a mandate, and you collect payments against it. Payments take 2–5 business days to confirm, depending on the scheme and country.
Pay By Bank uses open banking to collect a one-off payment with confirmation within minutes. It doesn't require a mandate but needs customer authorisation each time.
What is Direct Debit?#
Direct Debit is a pull-based payment mechanism that puts you in control of collecting payments from your customers, rather than relying on them to send you funds when payment is due.
Other common regional terms include Pre-Authorised Debit (or Pre-Auth), or the name of the operator's scheme — such as ACH in the US.
Each country (or region) operates its own bank payments scheme with its own rules and regulations.
What is a scheme?#
A scheme is the infrastructure and operational mechanism that enables bank-to-bank payments to be processed within a country or region. The scheme a payment is processed through is determined by where the payer's bank account is based.
Optimising payments#
Success+ automatically recovers failed payments using machine learning. Protect+ detects and combats fraud using GoCardless payment intelligence data.
What's next?#
Answer a few questions to get a recommended integration path for your use case.
Collect customers' bank details for future Direct Debit payments.
Take a single payment via Pay By Bank or Direct Debit.
Set up subscriptions, instalments, or variable recurring payments.