The highlights of 2015 from Team GoCardless

As 2015 draws to a close, we wanted to look back at some of the most memorable moments this year at GoCardless.

We started by thinking about all the milestones we reached this year - reaching $1bn of processing volume, expanding into Europe, being listed in the FinTech50 and growing our team to 60 people.

Then we thought about all the litres of coffee consumed, the number of office pizzas ordered and the number of late nights spent working on the product.

We even considered creating a lovely infographic to share all this info with you.

Then we sat back for a moment of reflection and thought... nah.

The best thing we could do is to hand over the spotlight to our amazing team: the ones who have made everything possible over the past year. We wanted to give them the opportunity to tell you, in their own words, what they loved most about 2015.

So, without further ado, here are the 2015 highlights from Team GoCardless.

Launching GoCardless in Europe

"My highlight of 2015 was launching GoCardless in two new countries. We started with France in April and have already seen some explosive growth there. In September, we launched in Germany, the largest Direct Debit market in Europe. I won't forget our launch in Munich, surrounded by Lederhosen and pretzels, and the preceding press roadtrip to Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg.”

Jutta, Global 

Paving the way for the new version of GoCardless

“My highlight of the year has to be the steps we’ve taken in preparation for the launch of an exciting new version of our product.

Being part of the support team, I get to hear first hand of any difficulties our merchants face when using the current product. Also, I hear all the request for features that we don’t currently offer but would prove useful to our merchants. It’s been hugely exciting to work alongside our design and engineering teams and to be able to bring these new features and improvements to fruition.

Complementing this has been our work on improving internal processes to make sure GoCardless is as simple and stress-free to use as possible. It’s meant more late nights working on the product in recent months and we’ve still got some work to do to reach our ambitious targets. However, once all the improvements have rolled out in 2016, there’s no doubt they will prove hugely beneficial to the GoCardless user experience. This will help us to cement our position as one of the leading FinTech companies in 2016.”

James, Support

Cycling to Bath with the GoCardless Team

“Arriving in Bath after two beautiful days of cycling was amazing. A huge credit to Corinne, who organised the whole trip, including months of early morning training rides to whip us into shape!”

Grey, Engineering

Winning ‘The Great GoCardless Bake Off’!

“At the start of December, the GoCardless office was transformedinto Bake Off HQ as part of Local Giving’s #GiveMe5 campaign. Our very own Mary and Paul had their work cut out with the judging as all of the entries were fantastic! But the zingy lime and mint mojito cupcakes came out on top to have me crowned as GC’s Queen Baker. Overall, we raised £170 which has been donated to Voluntary Action Islington.”

Laura, Support

Kicking off Customer Success

“In June, we kicked off Customer Success at GoCardless. It has been great working with people across a host of our existing and newer merchants, getting to know each other’s businesses, goals and challenges much better. Together we’ve made countless improvements, and the odd mistake, learning a huge amount along the way. It’s been a joy working with so many smart, friendly and positive people, both clients and colleagues. Here’s to an even more successful 2016!”

Michael, Customer Success

Kitesurfing with the team in Sussex

“The highlight of my year was when a group of us headed down to Camber Sands in Sussex for an introduction to kitesurfing. I’ve been doing it for a few years and it was awesome to be able to share this with some of the team. The wind even managed to play ball as well so we were able to get out onto the water!"

Jess, People

Our design team trip to New York

“My 2015 highlight was the trip to New York for the design conference ‘Brooklyn Point-Oh’. The talks were brilliant and touring the city was alright too!”

Sam, Design

Making it easier for new merchants to join GoCardless

“In 2015, we made the on-boarding process for GoCardless Pro and global sign-ups much more simple. We did this by working with our partners to automate as much of the process as possible.

In the new version of GoCardless, the signup process now only takes 2 minutes. We’ve been able to immensely simplify the process and you’ll no longer need to provide as many details. When you’re ready to complete verification checks, you’ll be guided through the process in our new redesigned interface. This is much more efficient and saves our merchants a lot of time when getting started with GoCardless.”

Dave, Support

Adding Swedish Direct Debit to GoCardless

“Adding support for Swedish Direct Debit (Bg Autogiro) is my highlight of the year. After SEPA Direct Debit, Autogiro was the next scheme to be supported by GoCardless. After 4 years of digging into the details of Bacs and SEPA Direct Debit, it was a great validation to see this expertise pay off for Sweden. It enabled us to add Swedish Autogiro in record time. The Engineering team played a huge part in this, taking an incredibly complex integration and a whole new set of payment rules and adding it to our API in a way that gives existing Bacs and SEPA merchants a seamless way to start collecting Swedish Krona!”

Jenna, Global

Modelling the Lederhosen at our launch in Germany

We decided to add this one on Hiroki (our CEO)’s behalf, simply because he clearly loved his day in those Lederhosen!

On behalf of everyone at GoCardless, a happy new year! We wish you all the best for 2016!