The team at GoCardless notes that Open Banking is the key to changing how we make payments, and get paid.
So when GoCardless finalized their Series F investment round at the end of 2020, they immediately put that investment to work – “accelerating [their] product development and launching Instant Bank Pay in the UK, a new way to pay directly from a bank account using open banking.” Hiroki Takeuchi, the CEO at GoCardless, writes in a blog post that it’s been met with steady adoption and thousands of their clients are already using it to obtain one-time payments.
Closing this latest round just over a year later is “a real vote of confidence for our strategy and [the firm’s management is] delighted to share that [they’ve] raised over $312 million with Permira as [their] lead investor and BlackRock Private Equity Partners also joining the round as a new investor.” This new funding offers them with the opportunity “to build on our unique experience in bank debit and usher in a new era of direct bank payments.”
The announcement also mentioned:
“Open banking is going to play a big role in our future, so we’re doubling down on our plans to accelerate in this area and are expanding our vision to become the world’s ‘bank pay’ network. By providing simple and secure direct bank payment solutions, we’ll help businesses and their customers bypass unnecessary intermediaries and pay directly via their bank account.”
As noted in the update:
“We are focused on enabling both recurring and one-time payments that are lower cost, faster, and more secure for businesses globally. At GoCardless, we’ve always believed that bank debit is the best way to collect recurring payments, and open banking is set to make ‘bank pay’ the best way to collect one-time payments too.”
The company’s management added:
“Until now, online payments have been constrained by payment methods that were created for an offline world, resulting in high transaction costs and slow payout times. We know that there is a better way to collect payments, so we’ll be looking to open our ‘bank pay’ network to other payment service providers who want to tap into our technology and platform.”
As noted in the blog post from GoCardelss, the team worked hard in 2021 – growing their customer base by 20%. Their organization is “the strongest it’s ever been and, through tracking the continued development of open banking initiatives, [they] have seen a significant rise in payment innovations.”
As an example – they collected the first-ever live Variable Recurring Payment (VRP) with Open Banking in the UK in 2019. Now, it’s been announced that “the UK’s top nine banks must build VRPs before July 2022 and [they] are already building exciting capabilities to be at the forefront of this opportunity,” the announcement revealed.
As noted in the update, it is an exciting time for the GoCardless team and they are pleased to be able to “start a new year off with such positive news.” They are also thrilled to welcome the Permira and BlackRock Private Equity Partners teams to join them as they take GoCardless to the :next level.”
Hiroki Takeuchi concluded:
“Finally, I’d like to extend a huge thank you to our customers, our partners, our investors and the entire GoCardless team for being a part of this journey with us.”