Connect AI to GoCardless: Introducing our MCP

Imagine closing your books without touching a spreadsheet. You ask your AI assistant, like Claude, to reconcile yesterday's GoCardless transactions with your accounting software, like QuickBooks. It drafts your receipts, files them, and does any complex task you ask it to, while you get on with running your business. You use natural language to ask your AI assistant to manage your business operations and do time-consuming admin on your behalf, acting across whatever tools you connect it to. Meanwhile, GoCardless handles the payments securely behind the scenes.

From read-only to read-write

Earlier this year we launched read-write capabilities for our MCP (Model Context Protocol), the tool that connects your GoCardless account to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT. Previously, our MCP was read-only, letting you ask questions to pull real-time data across payments, customers, mandates, subscriptions, payouts, refunds, and events. Now, it can act on data too.

What your AI assistant can now do

In plain language with no code required, you can tell your AI assistant to:

• Create payments

• Generate billing requests

• Process refunds

• Cancel mandates

By plugging your AI assistant into your operations, you will be able to spend less time on admin and run your business more efficiently, freeing up valuable time for you and your team. 

Built with security in mind

Read-write access doesn’t mean complete access; AI access is structured to keep data secure. Sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) like bank account numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers are automatically masked before any AI sees them.

We've also reduced interruptions to make it easier to keep your workflows running. You only need to re-authenticate every two weeks for read-write access, and once a month for read-only — so your automations stay connected without constant interruption.

The results so far

Since launch, hundreds of businesses have connected their AI workflows to GoCardless, generating thousands of actions. When surveyed, GoCardless customers rated our MCP 4.2 out of 5, with 83% saying it makes managing their accounts significantly easier.

Businesses are already putting the MCP to work in ways that save real time.

How businesses are using it:

• Accounting automation: Reconcile GoCardless with your accounting software, auto-draft receipts, and save records straight to Google Drive, turning an afternoon of manual matching into a single prompt.

• Faster integration: Developers use our MCP to explore the API in natural language. One founder cut their build time from several days to a single session.

• Smarter troubleshooting: Combine our MCP with tools like Claude Code and Python to trace payment histories and resolve complex support tickets in minutes, not hours.

• Hands-free operations: Set your AI assistant to check for weekly payments, flag anything overdue, and draft the follow-ups, so nothing slips through. 

Ready to let AI take action? 

Read-write turns our MCP from a reporting tool into something that runs the work for you. This is a glimpse of where business operations are heading, with less admin, faster data-backed decisions, and payment operations that increasingly manage themselves. As AI moves from answering questions to managing whole workflows, GoCardless gives it secure, structured access to handle payments end-to-end.

Ready to connect your AI assistant to your GoCardless account? Find out how in our customer hub.