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GoCardless

Score8.4 out of 10

19 Reviews and Ratings

What is GoCardless?

GoCardless, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, is a recurring payments platform that integrates with the applications businesses use every day, to give businesses more visibility over payments and saving the time on tasks like payment reconciliation. The vendor states they partner with more than 150 billing and subscription software partners globally, including Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Zuora and Salesforce.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Fraud Detection

    Ability to detect fraudulent transactions while allowing legitimate transactions

    Category average: 7.1

  • Recurring Payment Support

    Ability to support subscriptions and recurring payments

    Category average: 7.4

  • Billing and Invoicing Support

    Billing a client for work done

    Category average: 7.3

Areas for Improvement

  • Global Support

    Supports many currencies and languages

    Category average: 7.4

  • Payment Form Acceptance

    Ability to accept many different forms of payment

    Category average: 7.2

  • API or SDK

    Tools to interact with payment gateway code

    Category average: 7.8

GoCardless The Payment Process That Works

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to take payments for our clients monthly subscription fees and the one-off accountancy fees. It saves us time and money in not having to chase our clients for payment and provides us a secure method for taking payment in a more formalised manner that our clients know and trust.

Pros

  • Formalises the Direct Debit process
  • Low cost payment solution
  • Easy to use payment gateway

Cons

  • Reduction in fees for customers who use it for large volumes of clients
  • Easier for clients to review their payment plans
  • Payment sooner to our bank account

Return on Investment

  • Saves employing someone to chase client fees
  • Saves time in setting up outdated payment methods
  • Saves banking fees

Usability

Other Software Used

Sage Accounting

GoCardless makes making a payment a breeze!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use GoCardless as one of the options for customers to make payments on their accounts. They can set up auto pay for their monthly invoices which is very convenient.

Pros

  • Documents ACH payments by the customer.
  • Tracks all returns and sends emails on any issues with payments.
  • Sends us an email when a new customer has signed up in the portal.

Cons

  • I would like to get an email with the transactions for the day.
  • I would like the email on returns to indicate the customer's name or account number.

Return on Investment

  • Customers appreciate using a bank account for payments to eliminate any credit card fees that may be implemented in the future.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Visa Acceptance Solutions (CyberSource)

Other Software Used

Sage Intacct, Salesforce CMS, Expedite Commerce, SysAid, Microsoft 365, Adobe Acrobat, DocuSign

Global Direct Debits That Integrate with Software and Websites

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Kanopy expands its global footprint significantly in recent years, and the business was looking for a global payment processing solution that would allow customers to easily make payments thru a portal to local bank accounts without incurring any fees on their end. We specifically were looking to integrate payment processing directly into the web portal that customers use for Kanopy. The goal was to minimize more expensive credit card payments and also convert customers who still pay by check to ACH / direct debit. Kanopy has 2 options for invoicing, a direct 'shopping cart' method to pay upon purchase or an end-of-month invoicing based on usage. Integrating GoCardless would allow customers who purchase via shopping cart to pay via other methods than simply credit card, which is cheaper for Kanopy.

Pros

  • Onboarding and implementation process.
  • Customer integration for software that can't connect "out of the box".
  • Customer service (specifically with technical issues and troubleshooting).

Cons

  • Pricing structures - very specific to each user and seems to vary greatly.
  • Add additional countries to supported list for bank accounts.
  • Adoption strategies for users' customers.

Most Important Features

  • Integration with core business software & website.
  • Meets customer needs (security, ease of use, no additional costs).
  • Faster and automated payments.
  • Pricing structure.

Return on Investment

  • Increase customer digital payments vs. check by 18% and climbing.
  • Decrease time to pay significantly and allow payment directly at time of order.
  • Reduce write-off and non-payment by customer.
  • Cost to Kanopy has been reasonable and benefit exceeds the fees.

Alternatives Considered

Stripe, PayStand and Square POS

Low cost & easy to setup payment platform gateway

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

2 years back, one of our clients was looking for payment gateways to receive the payments through direct debit. Since my client was a small business and many of its customers are not that tech-savvy, we decided to set up the dd through GoCardless solely because of the low membership fee. This turned out to be our best decision as GoCardless was quick & easy to set up the platform and integrated well with lots of different website landing pages to process payment.

Pros

  • Real time status of direct debit payments
  • Homepage dashboard is well made and efficiently tracks the payment status
  • GoCardless website supports multiple language

Cons

  • Reconciliation of balance could be expedited
  • Didn't get data of customers who cancels their payment

Most Important Features

  • Easy to use website
  • User friendly system offering easy to create new payment plans

Return on Investment

  • cost of collection payments has reduced
  • Drop in late payments or no good payments

Alternatives Considered

Bill.com

A great tool for collecting recurring payments

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Most of my business' income is monthly recurring payments, so we use GoCardless to process those payments, rather than relying on customers creating their own standing orders. It fixes the issue of manual payments and also waiting for customers to set up those standing orders. The fees are a little higher than they used to be as they uses to be capped, but they're still very low.

Pros

  • Reliably takes recurring payments
  • Makes it easy and secure for customers to set up their direct debits with us
  • Informs us when payments have failed at the customer's end
  • Makes it easy to see upcoming payments that will be collected

Cons

  • Not really useable on mobile - no mobile app and poor display in a mobile browser
  • Takes a while for the first payment in a DD to come in, although I appreciate that's a limitation of DD rather than a GoCardless issue, it's worth noting compared the credit/debit card alternatives

Most Important Features

  • Xero integration
  • Reliability
  • Customer trust

Return on Investment

  • Reduced debtor days
  • Less time spent by the team chasing payments
  • Reduced payment collection fees

Alternatives Considered

Stripe

Other Software Used

Xero, WordPress, Elementor, Dropbox, Todoist: To-Do List & Task Manager, Stripe