Getting Started
Overview
GoCardless makes collecting bank payments easy.
Direct Debit is an automated payment method that allows you to pull payments from your customers’ bank accounts.
The GoCardless API is a wrapper around diverse national Direct Debit systems in the UK, Eurozone, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America, allowing you to collect payments everywhere with one integration.
There are three key parts to an integration with the API - you can do one, two or all three of them:
Authorise Payments
Customers set up an authorisation (open banking verification, direct debit mandates), giving approval for payments to be collected
Collecting Payments
Collect payments against your mandates/bank authorisations. GoCardless provides the ability to collect both one-off and recurring payments
Stay up to date with webhooks
Stay up to date with payment statuses and reconcile payouts
Alongside the API, you’ll have access to the GoCardless Dashboard which you can also use to manage your account.
This means that, for example, you could choose to add your customers through your website using an API integration, but bill them manually through the Dashboard.
Building a partner integration?
In this first step of the partner integration guide, we’ll take you through securely gaining access to your users’ GoCardless accounts. You’ll end up with an access token, which we’ll be able to use later on in this guide to set up mandates and payments on your user’s behalf. Start here