GoCardless is a

fintech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are r ...

company that specialises in recurring payments,

Direct Debit A direct debit or direct withdrawal is a financial transaction in which one organisation withdraws funds from a payer's bank account., https://www.directdebit.co.uk/direct-debit-explained/what-is-direct-debit/ Formally, the organisation that calls f ...

processing and

Open Banking Open banking is a financial services term within financial technology. It refers to: #The use of open APIs that enable third-party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution. #Greater financial transparency ...

. The company is headquartered in London. GoCardless provides a payment gateway that enables businesses to set up and manage payments, subscriptions and invoices with automated payment processing. As of 2022, GoCardless reportedly processes $30 billion worth of transactions annually and operates in UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

History

GoCardless was founded in 2011 by Hiroki Takeuchi, Matt Robinson, and

Tom Blomfield Thomas Benjamin Blomfield (born 11 August 1985) is a British entrepreneur. Early life Blomfield grew up in Buckinghamshire and attended the selective Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham. His first business was building a website for a lo ...

, who were students at Oxford University at the time. The company's initial focus was on providing a platform for small and medium-sized businesses to collect recurring payments via

direct debit A direct debit or direct withdrawal is a financial transaction in which one organisation withdraws funds from a payer's bank account., https://www.directdebit.co.uk/direct-debit-explained/what-is-direct-debit/ Formally, the organisation that calls f ...

. In 2012, the company received £1.5 million in funding from investors, including

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

Google Ventures GV is a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides seed, venture, and growth stage funding to technology companies. Founded as Google Ventures in 2009, the firm has operated independently of Google, Alph ...

Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

and

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...

. In 2013, GoCardless launched its service in the United Kingdom, and the company expanded into Europe in 2014, launching in France, Germany, and Spain. In 2017, the company raised $22.5 million in a Series D funding round, bringing its total funding to $47.2 million. In 2018, GoCardless launched its service in the United States with an office opening in San Francisco. In 2020, the company expanded into Australia and New Zealand and raised $95 million, becoming a startup

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

. In 2022 the company raised $312 million and was valued at $2.1 billion.

Partnerships and acquisitions

In 2018, GoCardless partnered with

QuickBooks QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1983, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward Small and medium-sized enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses and offer On-premises sof ...

, a maker of cloud-based accounting software, to offer customers

as a payment option. The partnership provided QuickBooks' customers with a way to collect recurring payments from their customers. In 2020, GoCardless announced a partnership with

Zuora Zuora is an American enterprise software company headquartered in Redwood City, California that creates and provides software for businesses to launch and manage their subscription-based services. Zuora's applications are designed to automate re ...

, a cloud-based subscription management platform. The partnership aimed to simplify the subscription billing process for Zuora's customers by providing them with access to GoCardless' global direct debit network. In July 2022, GoCardless announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire the

provider Nordigen for an undisclosed sum.

Products and services

The company offers an API that enables businesses to integrate GoCardless into their own websites or applications, as well as pre-built integrations with accounting and billing software such as Xero,

, and

. The company aims to provide an alternative to traditional payment methods, such as

credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...

and debit cards, which can be costly for businesses to manage. In addition to its payment processing services, GoCardless provides a variety of tools to help businesses manage their payments, including real-time payment tracking and reporting, payment failure alerts, and customer insights. In 2020 the company launched a service called GoCardless for

, which allows businesses to collect payments and manage their customer data within Salesforce's customer relationship management ( CRM) platform.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Financial services companies established in 2011 British companies established in 2011 Technology companies based in London Financial technology companies Merchant services Financial services companies based in London