Will your customers actually use Recurring Pay by Bank?

Most businesses weighing up Recurring Pay by Bank get past the technical questions fairly quickly. The one question we’ve heard from customers that is harder to answer is: “Will my customers actually use it?”

If it's new to you, Recurring Pay by Bank is a faster, more flexible alternative to Direct Debit and credit cards. Added to your normal checkout flow, customers agree to the amount and frequency of payments, they approve it once in their banking app, then you collect varying amounts on a set schedule, straight from their bank account.

Asking someone to try an unfamiliar payment method at the exact moment they're committing to a recurring charge is a behavioural shift (not just a technical one) - that could be a hurdle for customers when faced with more familiar methods.

The good news is that you don't have to take it on faith. We surveyed 2,000 UK consumers and 489 recurring revenue business leaders for our report on recurring open banking payments (also known as commercial VRPs - cVRPs), and the picture that comes back is more encouraging than the worry suggests.

Quick summary

• 38% of UK consumers are open to Recurring Pay by Bank, rising to 60% among 18 to 27-year-olds.

• Appetite is highest in the Wave 1 sectors going live first: energy (46%), telecoms (35%), insurance (27%).

• 49% of businesses want to be early adopters, rising to 54% in utilities and 52% in financial services.

• Customers approve payments in their own banking app with biometrics — no new login or card details.

• Unsupported banks fall back to Direct Debit automatically, so as not to disrupt your conversion rates.

We've seen this adoption curve before

It helps to remember how new payment habits actually take hold. When contactless cards arrived in the UK in 2007, the limit was £10, and plenty of people were wary of tapping instead of entering a PIN. Trust grew with use, and as it did, the cap climbed to £30 in 2015, £45 in 2020 and £100 in 2021, each rise a direct response to how comfortable people had become. The behaviour followed, by 2023, contactless made up 38% of all payments in the UK.

Recurring Pay by Bank sits at the start of that same curve. Payment methods that genuinely work tend to travel the same path — early hesitation gives way to familiarity, and familiarity becomes habit. The difference this time is that the foundation of trust is already built, because customers are authorising payments inside the banking app they use every day.

Consumers are already warming to it

When we explained the concept to consumers, 38% said they'd be open to paying this way, rising to 60% among 18 to 27-year-olds (Gen Z). That's a strong starting position for a method that hadn't formally launched when we asked this question.

How open are UK consumers to Recurring Pay by Bank?

Among UK consumers presented with the concept of Recurring Pay by Bank, 38% said they would be open to adopting it, rising to 60% among Gen Z (18–27). Source: Revolutionising Recurring Revenue: The Strategic Opportunity of Commercial VRPs, GoCardless, 2026.

Appetite is stronger in the sectors going live first. Almost half of consumers (46%) would use it for energy bills, with real interest in telecoms (35%) and insurance (27%) too. These are the Wave 1 sectors — exactly the businesses that stand to roll Recurring Pay by Bank out first. The appetite and the timing line up.

A payment experience they already know

A lot of the fear around adoption assumes you're asking customers to learn something new. Paying by bank account leans on familiarity and runs through the banking apps they already use every day. Using open banking has firmly moved into the mainstream — one in five UK consumers and small businesses now use it, up from one in 17 in 2021, and usage is growing around 40% year on year.

To set up a recurring account-to-account payment, customers approve it inside their own bank's app, using the same fingerprint or face scan they use to check their balance. There's no new login to remember and no card number to dig out of a wallet. What kills adoption at the point of authorisation is usually unfamiliarity, and a screen branded by the customer's own bank is about as familiar as it gets.

Give customers the control they're asking for

Consumer expectations have moved. People want to see and steer where their money goes, and today's options force a trade-off. Cards authorise instantly but leave payments pending, so it's hard to know your real balance. Meanwhile, Direct Debit is the trusted set-and-forget choice, but it's hard to get real-time views of changes once it's running.

Open banking recurring payments close that gap. Customers agree on an upper limit on what can be collected, and they can cancel the arrangement straight from their banking app. For a generation used to managing everything by phone, that shift from passive to in control is a big part of the appeal.

Businesses want to move too

Adoption isn't only a consumer story. Among the business leaders we surveyed, 49% want to be early adopters, climbing to 52% in financial services and 54% in utilities. The motivation is concrete: 89% believe it would improve their cash flow, and 91% believe it would save them money.

That enthusiasm comes from feeling the cost of the status quo. Around three in 10 businesses collecting by card wrestle with failed recurring transactions, and combined with failures, fraud, and admin overhead, card payment issues cost businesses around 3.5% of their monthly revenue. Meanwhile, 27% of those using Direct Debit point to insufficient funds as a leading cause of failure. 

Recurring Pay by Bank runs a balance check before it collects, so a payment that would have bounced gets caught before it starts, rather than after the service has been delivered.

Is every bank account covered?

If a customer's bank doesn't yet support these recurring open banking payments, our Recurring Pay by Bank solution automatically routes through Direct Debit instead — no action needed from you or from them. You get full coverage from day one as a result, which means the pace of take-up never dents your collection rate. 

On launch, most major UK banks went live with this new method, with other banks and neobanks to follow suit. So, if a customer’s bank doesn’t support these new account-to-account payments yet, a customer simply keeps paying the way they already do with Direct Debit, while you keep the door open for them to switch later — and no revenue goes missing either way.

How fast will you move?

Consumer appetite and open banking adoption are real and growing fastest among younger payers, and business intent is high, especially in the sectors rolling out first. What's left is a question of timing. 

As an alternative to Direct Debit and credit cards, built for variable, recurring billing, Recurring Pay by Bank is arriving whether or not any single business is ready for it. In 12 months, it could be the norm rather than an edge case. Businesses that move early won't just trim operational costs — they'll give customers a better way to pay while everyone else is still asking whether anyone will use it.

Talk to our sales team to walk through your use case with a payments expert.