UK payments startup seeks global expansion
(24 March 2016 – United Kingdom) UK based startup GoCardless has revealed plans to expand its ‘bank-to-bank’ payment network globally, following a round of new venture capital.
The firm currently operates across six countries in Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. It assists companies collect pre-authorised payments from customer bank accounts and processes around £1 billion (A$1.89 billion) of payments annually from more than 16,000 merchants.
According to GoCardless’s chief executive and co-founder, Hiroki Takeuchi, the startup has raised US$13 million in funding to target biggest business clients. It also plans to expand into two to four additional markets with Canada a top priority. Australia, the US, Japan and Brazil are also key markets says Takeuchi.
Founded in London five years ago, the company originally targeted smaller businesses that wanted to easily set up recurring payments for their customers. However, Takeuchi said the company’s focus shifted to the big end of town.
"Larger companies are used to taking these kinds of payments but they have used quite antiquated legacy systems to do it," Takeuchi told Bloomberg.
According to the firm, its key features are that it designed to work wholly online, removing the need for the traditionally cumbersome paper-trail. GoCardless can sync directly with a business’s customer relationship software, for instance, alerting it if a payment fails.
Additionally, GoCardless also allows for cross-border sign-ups of recurring payments. This is something most existing direct debit processors can’t execute.
"Because banking systems are very geographically focused, moving funds between banking systems is very difficult," Takeuchi said.
The company makes money by taking a small percentage fee from the originating merchant on every transaction.
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