Guides

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. This page walks you through both.

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
Instant Bank Pay	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, but only once, and the customer authorises it with their bank. Merchants can then take future recurring payments and an instant upfront payment.	Sweeping between accounts, loan repayments, and 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. It combines the customer, their authorisation, their bank details, and the payment details into a single, manageable object.

Using Billing Requests makes it easy to handle everything from recurring payments to one-off payments. They also offer access to our latest open banking payments and products.

All three approaches below are powered by the same underlying API (Billing Requests)

	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	−	✔︎	✔︎

Ready to start? If you're unsure, start with Hosted Payment Pages — it's the fastest way to go live, and you can switch to a more custom approach later.

Additional functionality

Success+ automatically recovers failed payments using machine learning.
Protect+ detects and combats fraud using our industry-leading payment intelligence data.

Understanding bank payments

Direct Debit vs Instant Bank Pay

Most payment types use Direct Debit; the customer must set up a mandate, and you collect payments against it. Payments take 2-5 business days to confirm, depending on the scheme/country.

Instant Bank Pay 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 for this type of bank payment include Pre-Authorised Debit (or Pre-Auth); or in some cases by the name of their operator, such as ACH in the US.

Each country (or in some cases, region) operates its own bank payments scheme with its own rules and regulations.

What is a ‘scheme’?

In the context of bank payments, a scheme is the infrastructure and/or operational mechanism that enables bank-to-bank payments to be processed within a country or region. The scheme a payment is processed in is determined by where the payer (or more specifically, their bank account) is based.

Creating Mandates

Collect customers' bank details for future payments. Verified Mandates feature performs extra checks to ensure customers are genuine.

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