New fundraise - $13m to support our new payment network for the internet

We're excited to announce that we’ve raised a new $13m funding round led by Notion Capital and supported by our existing investors Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, and Passion Capital. We’re particularly pleased to have Notion Capital on board as their team will bring additional expertise and experience to our board having built and exited three highly-successful businesses including MessageLabs.

This is key for us to succeed in our vision to build a new payment network for the internet. It allows us to improve on our existing product in the UK and Europe, as well as expand our global footprint.

The fundraise is not the only milestone GoCardless has reached over the last few months. Today, we’re also pleased to announce that we are processing more than £1 billion per year - collectively, our 16,000 merchants are collecting over 10 million payments each year through our bank-to-bank network. Our solution has opened up access to the Direct Debit system for small businesses, and has helped multinationals meet the needs of their customers with a Direct Debit solution built for the digital age. We’re proud that this has contributed towards the 5.8% annual growth in Direct Debit payments that Bacs reported last year.

Our expansion into new markets is also picking up pace. We are now serving businesses in Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. They add to our growing presence in France and Germany. In France we are growing four times faster than when we launched in the UK, driven by customers like Habitat & La Fourchette, and partnerships like Mangopay. In Germany, we are picking up traction with some great customers including rankingCoach, betahaus Hamburg and the soon to launch partnership with accounting software Debitoor.

Whilst I am immensely proud of all of the above, our ongoing growth and success is all down to you, our incredibly supportive and loyal users. This is why my highlight of the year so far is the launch of our new dashboard next month. We’ve used your feedback to make it more intuitive than ever and given it the power and flexibility to grow with your business. It’s been a huge company-wide project and we hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed building it. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.