GoCardless powers payments for Cobot’s coworking spaces in Germany

Cobot, a German cloud-based management application for coworking spaces, and GoCardless have partnered up to make taking membership fees from coworkers a simple task. With GoCardless' new and more advanced integration, coworking spaces in Germany and the rest of the Eurozone can now collect payments for memberships and room bookings through SEPA Direct Debit. Having originated in the UK, the plans are to eventually extend this partnership globally.

What is Cobot?

Cobot was created in 2010 by Alexander Lang and Thilo Utke. The two former software consultants started Cobot out of necessity to manage their own coworking space co.up. Driven by the interest of other spaces, it quickly grew into a major and stand-alone product for co.up and today coworking spaces with around 30,000 coworkers worldwide. Cobot aims to be the best system for coworking management, taking over all the routine tasks that can be automated, from logging activity in the space to tracking invoices.

How does GoCardless help Cobot’s customers?

With the new integration complete, coworking spaces that use Cobot’s managing software can now seamlessly take payments from their coworkers using direct debit. With a simple 1% transaction fee, capped at 2€, GoCardless provides a competitive payment method for both recurring and one-off payments.

This new payment gateway for Cobot’s users comes with all the advantages of direct debit: coworking spaces can pull funds directly from their coworkers’ bank accounts whenever money is due on an invoice. As a result, coworking spaces get paid on time, and the experience for customers is improved.

Cobot’s billing software and GoCardless’ direct debit product make the process of collecting money a completely automated solution. This means coworking spaces need no longer worry about recurring monthly instalments, late or failed payments.

Finally, coworking spaces that use direct debit to collect their fees experience a lower rate of churn. This is in contrast to credit card payments for example, where card expiration is common. Of course, basic bank account details do not expire, therefore making direct debit a powerful payment method to increase retention rates.

How do you get involved?

If you are a coworking space that wants to take payments cheaply and easily from within Cobot using GoCardless, please do get in touch with either of us today!

Your coworking space already uses Cobot? That’s great! To start taking payments using GoCardless, simply add GoCardless as a new payment method in your Cobot account as shown below:

Also, have a look at Cobot’s blog post about the partnership here.