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Bank debit for SaaS companies

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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

Reviewed by

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 20232 min read

Bank debit helps SaaS companies reduce failed payments and admin and gives them flexibility to upgrade subscriptions or payment plans.

Bank debit helps SaaS companies reduce failed payments and admin and gives them the flexibility to upgrade subscriptions and payment plans.

Software as a Service (SaaS) companies increasingly charge on a subscription basis. Traditionally, the only option available for taking these payments online was credit card. Now, an increasing number of busianesses are turning to bank debit schemes, such as Direct Debit (UK) ACH payments (US), or SEPA (Europe).

GoCardless helps hundreds of SaaS companies, from start-ups to established providers, to cut their costs by taking bank debit payments online.

Three benefits a SaaS company could get by switching to bank debit today:

Gives complete flexibility to upgrade and downgrade subscriptions or payment plans.
Reduces failed payments/churn.
Reduces internal payment and accounting admin.

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.

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1. Bank debit gives you complete flexibility to upgrade and downgrade subscriptions

SaaS company customers may, from time to time, wish to upgrade or downgrade their subscriptions. With bank debit you can maximise conversions to upgrades as customers don't need to re-authorise their payments. Your customer gives you a single authorisation on sign up, which allows you to take payments of any amount without asking them to do anything more.

This flexibility also lets you charge customers depending on how much they use that month without needing a new authorisation every month.

2. Bank debit helps you reduce failed payments

Traditionally, the only option for taking payments online was to use credit cards. But roughly 5-10% of card payments fail each month due to card expiry or cancellation. This is a bad experience for your customers, creates unnecessary work for them, and worst of all, if they forget, may result in their subscription lapsing. By contrast, bank debit payments use a customer’s bank details, which rarely expire or change.

GoCardless makes it easy to accept Direct Debit. Automate payment collection. Reduce manual admin. Get paid on time, every time.

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3. Bank debit reduces administration through automation

Many bank debit schemes can be entirely automated by integrating GoCardless's REST API with your website, CRM and accounts. Payments are automatically taken and tracked each month. This significantly reduces the time required to manage them.

How to get started with bank debit

You can start taking payments by bank debit using 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.

With GoCardless you can collect payments in more than 30 countries via 8 bank debit schemes; Bacs (UK), ACH (USA), SEPA (Eurozone), BECS (Australia), Autogiro (Sweden), Betalingsservice (Denmark), PaymentsNZ (New Zealand), PAD (Canada). 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 or at the click of a button. We manage everything else for you. We are also integrated with many of the most popular accounting packages to enable easy invoicing and payment reconciliation.
Simple, low pricing. Many SaaS start-ups also choose GoCardless due to the simple pricing structure, including no set-up costs and fixed monthly fees. Scale pricing is also available. See full details of pricing here.
Simple online dashboard and REST API. Some bank debit bureaus provide an API which you can plug into. GoCardless offers a simple online dashboard and REST API, which allow you to integrate GoCardless with your website and CRM.

We can help

GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.