# Create a Payment

Source: https://docs.gocardless.com/docs/getting-started/create-a-payment

# Create a payment

## Create your first payment

This page gives you an overview of the payment types we support and introduces Billing Requests, our fastest way of creating and managing payments.

> **Info: What you**
> - A GoCardless Sandbox account and your API access token ([set up guide](/docs/getting-started/set-up))
> - A developer environment capable of making requests to the GoCardless API

## Payment types

We specialise in bank payments and offer several types of payment:

- **Recurring and one-off payments via Direct Debit**: This is the most flexible way to collect payments. Your customers complete a mandate, then you can collect payments as agreed with the customer.

- **One-off payments via Pay By Bank**: This is the fastest way to collect payments, with confirmation of collection within minutes of the customer giving authorisation. However, it requires authorisation from the payer each time.

- **Instant first payment and Direct Debit mandate set up**: This allows you to take an instant first payment while setting up a mandate to take subsequent payments.

## Using Billing Requests to create payments

The simplest way to create any payment is with a Billing Request.

A Billing Request brings all the parts of a payment together. It combines the customer, their authorisation, their bank details, and the payment details into a single, manageable object. Using them makes it easy to handle everything from recurring payments to one-off payments.

They also offer access to our latest open banking payments (Pay By Bank) and products.

## How to create payments

  
#### [Create mandates to collect ad-hoc one-off or recurring payments](/docs/collect-payments/setting-up-mandates)

Collect customers' bank details for future payments.

  
#### [Instant one-off payments](/docs/collect-payments/one-off-payments/pay-by-bank)

Collect a one-time payment much faster than the typical Direct Debit timeline.

  
#### [First instant payment and mandate set up](/docs/collect-payments/recurring-payments/instant-first-payment-with-mandate)

Take a first-time instant payment (e.g. joining fee) with a mandate set up for subsequent
    payments.

## Next steps

  
#### [Stay up to date with webhooks](/docs/getting-started/stay-up-to-date-with-webhooks)

Receive real-time notifications from GoCardless when things happen in your account.