GoCardless selects account-to-account platform to boost Bacs connectivity

Bank payment company GoCardless has chosen account-to-account platform Form3 to provide Bacs payment connectivity to support the scale up of its UK operations.

Through the partnership, Form3 will give GoCardless improved operational and technical “resilience” to ensure that service continuity is maintained, even as the volume of UK payment transactions it handles continues to grow.

GoCardless processes more than 4% of the UK’s direct debit volume, according to data from Pay.UK.

With in excess of 250 million payments ​going via Bacs annually, a core part of GoCardless’ growth strategy has been the implementation of a solution with bank-grade payment submission channels.

Form3’s account-to-account platform also gives GoCardless the option to connect to other payment schemes across the UK and Europe.

Neil Turner, chief technology officer at GoCardless said: “Tens of thousands of customers in the UK trust GoCardless to collect their payments and keep cash flowing within their businesses.

“Having the right systems in place to process these payments, and the ability to potentially handle millions more transactions each month is fundamental to our business.”

Turner added: “Form3 has the reputation of offering fast and resilient payment processing that can match our ambitious growth.”

Nearly 100,000 businesses use GoCardless to collect and send payments through direct debit, real-time payments and Open Banking.

Mike Walters, chief executive officer of Form3, agreed that Form3’s payment technology can be relied on by GoCardless for “operational resiliency, speed, and the ability to scale, to support its UK business growth”.

He added: “Today’s announcement further demonstrates how we help the biggest and most ambitious fintechs with their next phase of expansion.”

Listen to Hamish Wood, vice president, customer success at GoCardless and Dave Campbell, operations lead at Tembo, on the Open Banking Expo Unplugged podcast, as they discuss how UK businesses can benefit from being “early adopters” of new payment technology, such as Open Banking.