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Direct Debit for membership organisations

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

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As a Senior Product Marketing Manager at GoCardless, Coral is focused on Top of Funnel and ensuring that customer-facing teams have the correct positioning, messaging, and understanding of pain points to deliver payment solutions to SMEs. Before GoCardless Coral worked as a Product Marketing Manager at PayPal and has experience in the travel industry as an entrepreneur. She is also a certified attorney. Coral completed an MBA at the London Business School.ConnectSee full bio

Last editedSep 20242 min read

Direct Debit helps membership organisations to improve member retention and to reduce admin and is suitable for organisations of all sizes.

GoCardless helps membership organisations of all sizes – from local sports clubs to national organisations – to collect fees by Direct Debit. This provides three main benefits:

Improve member retention by reducing payment failures
Automatically increase fees when you need to
Reduce membership and payment admin

1. Direct Debit improves member retention by reducing payment failures

Many membership organisations take recurring payments by credit and debit cards. Roughly 5-10% of these payments fail each month due to cards expiring or being cancelled. This is a bad experience for your members, creates unnecessary work for them having to update their details and worst of all, if they forget, may result in their membership lapsing. In contrast, Direct Debit payments use a customer’s bank details, which rarely expire or change.

Rock Choir, the UK’s largest contemporary choir, used to take payments by card but suffered from high failure rates. Director Dave Lusher “seemed to spend all [his] time chasing people to update their card details”.

Since switching to Direct Debit with GoCardless they’ve cut their failure rate by 80%, freeing Dave to spend that time on what matters to his members.

End the stress of being paid late by automating your payment collection!

Getting paid on time with GoCardless is simple, affordable and easy to set-up in just a few clicks.

Learn more about ending late payments

2. Direct Debit lets you increase fees when you need to

Membership organisations may, from time to time, need to increase their fees.

If you take payment by standing order, this can be difficult as you’ll need to cancel existing standing orders and ask your members to set up new ones. Direct Debit, on the other hand, lets you change the amount you collect without needing any further authorisation from your customer.

3. Direct Debit reduces membership and payment admin

Taking payments by cheque, cash and standing order can be a huge administrative burden, particularly as there is no automated reporting system. GoCardless gives you an online dashboard which displays the real-time status of your payments so you can see who has and hasn’t paid at any time.

Before switching to Direct Debit with GoCardless, Spencer Hockey Club found managing their 400 members challenging. Director Mark McDermott explains:

“We used to let members pay by cheque or bank transfer. It made collecting and tracking membership fees difficult and time consuming, and the club suffered from late and missing payments. Now 80% of our members pay by Direct Debit, and the black hole in our finances has disappeared.”

How to collect Direct Debit payments with GoCardless

1.

Create your free GoCardless account, access your user-friendly payments dashboard & connect your accounting software (if you use one).

2.

Easily set up & schedule Direct Debit payments via payment pages on your website checkout or secure payment links.

3.

From now on you'll get paid on time, every time, as GoCardless automatically collects payment on the scheduled date. Simple.

Get started in minutes Learn more

Swim club payments

GoCardless is the official payments partner and headline sponsor for Swim England. The sponsorship covers all Swim England national events, including swimming, diving, artistic swimming, and water polo.

At GoCardless, we already work with more than 7,000 customers and 75 partners in the sports, membership, health, and wellness space, making it easier for sports and swimming clubs to collect membership fees.

Aquatics clubs save time, money and stress by automating payment collection with GoCardless.

Get Started - no fees for 90 days Learn More

How to get started with Direct Debit

To start taking payments by Direct Debit, you can use a bank, bureau or GoCardless. If you would like to find out more about any of these options you may find our 60 second guide to Direct Debit providers helpful.

GoCardless is the UK’s leading Direct Debit payments provider. It lets you automate the whole payment process and manage everything online. It offers:

Quick and easy sign up - You can sign up instantly and for free.
Easy and efficient management - You can collect recurring and one-off payments automatically, and we manage the hard parts for you. We are also integrated with many of the most popular accounting packages to enable easy invoicing and payment reconciliation.
Simple, low pricing - Take a look at our competitive pricing options.
Hassle-free member sign up - Using Direct Debit with GoCardless, potential members can sign up instantly set up their payments online, rather than having to deal with post.